[TriLUG] Dell 2400 and Linux (warning formatting stuff in text)

[David A. Cafaro]

Well, really curious now, I'll have to schedule some downtime to make sure 
(ugh, a reboot, darn).  In the meantime I found this doc in the dell 
premier service area (not sure if the link will work directly so also added 
a cut and past below (directly from the web site):

http://premiersupport.dell.com/us/en/kb/document.asp?nav=Knowledge_Base&DN=RG1055408

 From the document:

Configure Disk Partitions
Click Manually Partition with Disk Druid and then click Next.
The Disk Druid window appears, listing the existing partitions on your 
system. This window allows you to perform the following actions on 
partitions: Delete, Edit, Add, Reset, or Add RAID Device(s).
NOTE: The Disk Druid utility shows a non-Linux partition that Dell created 
on your system. Dell recommends that you do not delete this partition. This 
partition is the utility partition that Dell installs on all systems. More 
information on the utility partition is available on the Dell OpenManage 
Server Assistant CD that was shipped with your system.
For your reference, Table 1 lists the mount points, partition sizes, and 
default partition types of the Red Hat Linux 7 operating system that Dell 
installed. You can partition your hard-disk drive according to this list or 
you can modify your partitions to fit your needs.
NOTE: With the exception of /usr2, assign all partitions in Table 1 to your 
first (primary) hard-disk drive (sda).
Mount PointPartition Size for Hard-Disk Drives 9.5 GB and LargerPartition 
Size for Hard-Disk Drives Smaller Than 9.5 GBPartition Type
UP (utility partition)32 MB32 MBMS DOS 16-bit
/512 MB256 MB - grow 2Linux native
/boot20 MB20 MBLinux native
swap512 MB512 MBLinux swap
/usr3072 MB3072 MBLinux native
/tmp128 MB128 MBLinux native
/var2048 MB - grow 22048 MBLinux native
/home3000 MB2500 MBLinux native
/usr2* MB 3Linux native
1 For second, third and additional hard-disk drives that may be present, 
assign all available megabytes to /mount/diskn (where n is the number of 
the additional disk drive). All disk drives must be listed in the System 
Definition Record (SDR).
2 To grow a partition, select the box for Use remaining space?.
3 The size of /usr2 depends on the hard-disk drive and RAID configurations.

and this:

Configure Linux Components
Linux Loader (LILO)
Dell recommends that you install LILO on the first boot partition (MBR) if 
a utility partition has been installed. In addition, if you select to 
create a boot disk, you will need a blank, formatted diskette for boot disk 
creation at a later time.


Hope this helps some.

David

At 03:13 PM 2/20/2002, you wrote:
>Right, Linux boots fine.  If I press F10 go to to the Utilities
>partition, it says that it's going there but guess what?  It lies.  RH
>still loads.
>
>"David A. Cafaro" wrote:
> >
> > I have a Dell 2400 with RH7.2 and it seems to have no problems.  I made
> > sure I didn't delete the Dell partition, and I had Grub stick it's boot
> > loader in the MBR.  On fdisk it marks the dell partition as the boot
> > device.  I haven't tried using the dell tools so I don't know if they are
> > broken, but Linux boots fine (and stable).  Running RH 7.2 + RH updates,
> > MySQL, Tomcat, Apache, 1.5 Gigs Memory, and 4 18gig SCSI HDs, and a single
> > PIII.  Unfortunately, I can't take the system down at the moment to test
> > out the dell tools.
> >