I have a EX470 and I took a hard drive and put it in my other PC, installed ubuntu server, then booted that hard drive on my PC, got ssh configured and successfully connected to it. I pulled all other drives out of my EX470 and placed the hard drive on the bottom rack, slot 1. The hard drive is not booting.

I checked my routers DHCP client list shortly after powering on the EX70 to see if Linux booted and the EX470 doesnt come up. Im running into some very weird situations... and im lead to believe it has somthing to do with the bios wanting to boot from the built in 256 SMI USB flash, from what im told is hardwired to boot that before any hard drives.

Do i need to modify the bios or the built in USB flash so I can get a clean boot on the ubuntu disk in slot 1? I am doing this all headless without a VGA port by the way.

**I have gotten the drive to boot on the mediasmart a couple of times, but its hit or miss... one person said pull out all the drives, then boot, shutdown, put drives back in and boot again. Ive tried everything from pulling out the network cable from the back, to changing the grub config to auto boot so Its not getting hung up on a prompt. Maby Im getting caught up on a bios screen? Hard to say because Im doing all of this headless

Your server may be booting but you may be encountering an issue with the NIC Driver causing the server not to show up on your network. So you will need to make sure the drivers are loaded on the OS Drive for the server for it to work.

If the SMI is booting the server into its recovery mode then you will see the health light blinking Purple/Red and if you check the routers DHCP Listing you will see a device starting with the name MININT. Actually if you see this then write down the MAC Address to help you identify the server in the future. If you want to find out what the MAC Address is you can force the server into its recovery mode to read it from the router or disassemble the server and its printed on the motherboard near the NIC. Its easier to just place the server into its recovery mode to do this if you so desire.

If the NIC is in question do not rely on the front LED but look at the back LED to see if its active or not. If its not active then the driver may be the issue but also the issue could be with a prompt that appears during the boot process, one that may be caused by a hardware conflict. Remember the other computer you tested this on is different then your EX470 so anything is possible when the server is booting. This is where a DEBUG Board comes in very handy but its hard to convince someone of this so many people get frustrated with blind installs, boots and troubleshooting and if you lose the NIC your dead in the water but a DEBUG Board will help you troubleshoot all these issues and more.

Good Luck......

UPDATE:

To my knowledge there should be no need to modify the BIOS to do what you want. Also do not much with the USB SMI Area which will most likely show up as a drive. If you disturb this area two things may occur, (1) The server may no longer boot and (2) You will lose the ability to reinstall the original OS unless you have made a copy of the SMI Files.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

When the ethernet cable is plugged into the NIC the leds on the NIC light up, as well as on my router. One thing I found odd was that when the server is completely powered down that NIC led stays on, as if its just suspended and not fully shut down for 'wake on lan' purposes.

I power on, 15 secs later I hear the drive start to spin for just a second and my keyboard flashes, im assuming thats the grub menu. I hit 'enter' to select option 1 which would be to boot ubuntu. a couple seconds later i hear my hard drive start to wind up and it winds for like 7 seconds than dies down. ... then im stuck.. I cant figure out what to do next.

so i pull the drive from the server and put it back into the pc i originally had it in ad boot as normal, it tries to load the drivers and hardware and i get a hardware conflict error that says its looking for a network interface... it says 'press m to cofigure manually' or 's to skip' or somthing of that nature. possibly the drivers to detect the hardware on the mediasmart?

Either way after putting it into the mediasmart, and trying to start it back up i the other pc... now it gets caught up in loading drivers and wont boot at all. Im using ubuntu server Im wondering if i should try a different distro that may be able to support the drivers better? Ive looked around for guides to install linux onto a ex470 but couldnt really find much. Im goin on day 7 now and at this point i feel its necessary to complete or im gunna be mad all my work was in vain haha.

The drivers will be the big issue unfortunately what your working on is something I never tackled but again if I were to take it on it would be easier for me because I have a DEBUG Board to help me out but after that the drivers would be the next major challenge.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

I fixed the NIC issue. Long story short, eth0 is set to the hardware address of the NIC on the first PC and eth0 is set to default. Once you put the HD into the MSS you get a new NIC set to eth1... you have to go into configs and remove the original eth0 and set 'eth1' to 'eth0' to match the MSS hardware. Tutorial that i used is here https://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Installing_HDA_on_HP_Mediasmart_Server#Installing_Ubuntu

Problem I have now is that when I add a hard drive to slot 2, 3, or 4 and try boot nothing happens. I have to pull out thoes HD's, and leave the HD in slot 1 with the file system, reboot. Then connect. I have tried plugging the hard drives into the bays while in ubuntu and no drives detect/add.

Any ideas?

I have exactly the same issue. Ubuntu 14.04 boots fine when the OS drive is the only disk in the system. When I put in any other disk, either in the EX470 chassis (doesn't matter which slot) or via the esata port on the back my OS won't boot.

I know its been a few months, but has anyone been able to solve this problem?

sirnickum

Wondering if you ever figured out how to boot your server after adding the additional hard drives. I have been experiencing the same issue.

I ended up abandoning it and using an old PC I had laying around with e-SATA ports and enclosures to get what I needed. The EX470 option was a nice idea but in practice was more trouble than it was worth.