[ILUG] ISO Images & Linux on a Poweredge 2300

[Dave Rynne]

) Hi All,
) 
) At the Mo' Im planning to install Linux onto a Dell Poweredge 2300 with 2 x
) PII 450, 1GB of RAM and a Dell
) Perc 2 RAID Controller, but I have a couple of questions that I'd be
) grateful if anyone could answer,
) Im thinking of using SuSE, RedHat or FreeBSD (out of curiosity)
) 
) 1. If anyone has set up linux using similar hardware, could you please help
) me out with any relevent information, eg. Linux Support for the Perc, RAID
) support etc.

Have maybe 15 similar(-ish) spec'd boxes here -- all 4300's & 6300's
though. Either 512 MB or 1GB RAM and vary from single processor PII's 
up to a quad PIII Xeon. You'll have to lie about the amount of RAM in
the box during the install but other than that, it should be fine.

Dell ship (or have shipped) a number of different PERC cards -- the 
PERC, PERC II, PERC 2 & PERC 2/SC (afaik). I can never remember which 
is which but from memory (someone in Dell may be able to confirm). The 
more recent cards (PERC 2 & PERC2/SC) are Adaptec based and are not 
supported by Linux or FreeBSD -- and no plans for support either AFAIK. 
The PERC II is an AMI MegaRAID card and is supported by Linux (FreeBSD 
suport is being worked on. Have a few of these here and they're not 
bad cards -- driver isn't the most optimised in the world though. No 
idea what the PERC is but it's prob also a MegaRAID card. 

Someone from Dell (John White me thinks) explained which was which a
few months ago. Should be somewhere in the list archives..

) 
) 2. I'm going to download the Distribution I choose from the net, with the
) ultimate goal of installing it via our internal ftp server. Is there a
) specific directory structure I should use. eg.
) myserver.mydomain/Redhat/6.1/i386 or somehing similar.

You should just need to keep the "i386" tree intact (or very close to).

) 
) 3. I've been looking at the ISO images on the various ftp sites, now asingle
) large file download is what I would prefer, Are there any utilities for NT
) that can expand ISO images or are they purely for burning onto CD.

Dunno -- prob best to burn and copy to a hd. NT would prob fsck up
file names if you just pulled straight out of an ISO image.

) 
) Thanks a million
) 
) Robert
) 
) 


Dave