Problems with gnoboot install on Dell PowerEdge 2950

Hi,

I have a spare Dell PowerEdge 2950 with 6 x 2 TB sata drives that I want to try XPEnology on. I ran into a couple of problems.

The first problem was that after booting the USB drive with the 10.5 gnoboot image the system froze with the error: 'Fixing recursive fault but reboot is needed!'.

I managed to get passed this error by removing the DVD drive from the server.

Now I'm having a problem with the network cards. The NICs are Broadcom NetExtreme II 5708, for which there should be drivers available but I don't seem to get a connection on either of them and they are displayed on boot up as DOWN (eth0 not UP, eth1 not UP)

I can post a video of the boot up sequence but I don't know if that would help. I would like to login into the Diskstation to get more info, but I probably haven't read through the forum enough in order to find out the root password.

Thanks for any help

Just an update to this that might give someone an idea of whats going on with the network.

The error I get when trying to UP any of the 2 interfaces is

ifconfig: ioctl 0x8914 failed: No such file or directory

As I mentioned before I believe that the network cards in the server are Broadcom NetXtreme II 5708.

When I try dmesg I found that it seems to locate the network card ok. I have attached a screenshot with the bnx2 driver section. If anybody needs any more info that might lead to a solution please ask away.

Thanks

Hi,

I'm about to embark on this project (DSM on 2950) did you manage to get a bcomm fix, I was going to try the same thing with a quad intel Nic

JB

Which dsm version did you try?

I recon trantors latest should work with your broadcom's

What storage controller is in the server?

.

for future reference for someone with a similar problem... find the firmware out on the net somewhere (bnx2-mips-06-6.2.1.fw or whatever the file name is - use your own dmesg to figure out what file exactly) and make sure you get the 64 or 32 bit version for your system and put the file in /usr/syno/hotplug/firmware/bnx2/ then reboot

bam!

(and i'm on DSM 5 with a bnx2 5709 so these firmware file sare *not* included from my experience)

Why not using nanoboot?

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Why not using nanoboot?

 

 

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nanoboot is not the be all and end of in my findings.

My preference is still Trantor's 4.3-3827 v7, never gives me any troubles and works on more hardware.

for me, I have had too many issues with nanoboot and just dont find it as stable for my uses

didnt work in nanoboot or gnoboot. neither have the f/w built in

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I have the same issue on my 2950. How are you able to log in with out a password set?

Otherwise I thought about mounting the zImage but that's apparently not a simple task.

Thanks in advance!