[Beowulf] Weird CentOS Install Problem

[Matt Lawrence]

On Fri, 8 Aug 2008, Jon Forrest wrote:

> I thought maybe some of you cluster people might have
> seen this.
>
> I have a brand new machine that will be the frontend
> of a cluster. It has a 3ware 9650 12-port RAID controller
> with 12 1TB drives attached.
>
> I used the "Boot Volume" feature in the RAID controller
> to make an 80GB boot volume. I install CentOS 5.2 x86_64
> on this and everything installed fine, except ...

I've never used that controller, so I may be off a bit.

> When I boot the newly installed machine it stops in
> the grub prompt. If I type by hand the commands in
> /etc/grub.conf (which I saw by booting from a rescue CD),
> the first command "root (hd0,0)" shows that an ext3 partition
> was recognized, as it should. However, when I enter the
> "kernel ...." command, I get the following error message:
>
> Error 18: Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS
>
> What's weird about this is that the root file system starts
> on cylinder 1, as confirmed by the fdisk command. This is
> using a brand new SuperMicro X7SBE motherboard with the
> newest BIOS.

I suggest you create a /boot partition of about 200MB.

Personally, I have gone to using an IDE->CF adapter and putting /boot on 
the Compact Flash.  I picked up several adapters for around $5 each a 
while back and I use CF cards that are smaller than I feel like using in 
my camera (nothing smaller than 4GB in my camera case).

-- Matt
It's not what I know that counts.
It's what I can remember in time to use.