On Saturday 27 May 2006 11:24, LDB wrote:

Good question .. I am not sure but I can find out. May I prematurely ask why?

The thought occurred to me that the version of SLES9 you're trying to install might not be correct for Itanium processors... this was *just* an intuitive guess. I suppose the correct request would be that you describe the hardware platform sufficiently that we can start asking intelligent questions. :-) Carl

LDB wrote:

Carl Hartung wrote:

...

On Saturday 27 May 2006 11:24, LDB wrote:

...

Good question .. I am not sure but I can find out. May I prematurely ask why?

The thought occurred to me that the version of SLES9 you're trying to install might not be correct for Itanium processors... this was *just* an intuitive guess. I suppose the correct request would be that you describe the hardware platform sufficiently that we can start asking intelligent questions. :-)

Carl

Agreed .. Thanks Carl .. I will get that information. Stay tuned ..

I had the same thought as Carl... x86_64 vs. ia64. x86_64 (sometimes called AMD64) is AMD's 64bit extension to ix86. ia64 is only for Intel's Itanium machines, which are obscenely expensive and quite rare. (And, as I understand it, Intel has dropped them and recently started using x86_64 for some of its' new processors, but they call it EM64T in order to save face.)

On Saturday 27 May 2006 12:29, Anders Johansson wrote:

Except that nothing in the world is compatible with IA64. If you try to boot the x86_64 version on an ia64 machine, you wouldn't get as far as yast

I sort of realized this after clicking 'Send' which is why I expanded the question to include a reasonable description of the hardware... could be raid or an unsupported/problematic/proprietary controller, etc., as you know... so, hopefully, having a better understanding of the server config will make progress with his problem possible. regards, Carl

On Saturday 27 May 2006 13:03, LDB wrote:

Obviously, clearly IA64 architecture.

Just to cap this interesting thread off, how far did the system get when you booted from the CD? The preliminary splash screen? ;-) Carl

On Saturday 27 May 2006 13:33, LDB wrote:

http://developer.intel.com/design/servers/platforms/sr870bh2/index.htm

Yes, after the splash screen. I was able to choose "Installation" but when it came time to start choosing the options right after it entered installation mode, that is when it froze everytime.

Thanks, LDB, now I can file this item away for the next time the question comes up. regards, Carl

On Sat, 2006-05-27 at 12:21 -0400, suse@rio.vg wrote:

x86_64 (sometimes called AMD64) is AMD's 64bit extension to ix86. ia64 is only for Intel's Itanium machines, which are obscenely expensive and quite rare. (And, as I understand it, Intel has dropped them and recently started using x86_64 for some of its' new processors, but they call it EM64T in order to save face.)

The IA-64 ISA is alive and well. Itanium3 should be out shortly. It adapts many Digital Alpha designs. IA-64 was a joint design by HP and Intel, replacing the PA-RISC and x86. Unfortunately, it was a CS ideal that didn't work out well in silicon, as most of the engineers at Digital Semiconductor predicted it would flop (long story). E.g., Digital's binary translation software is now being used for IA-64's x86 support -- because its hardware is _slower_. x86-64 is AMD's ISA, also called AMD64. Intel calls its subset implementation of x86-64 as IA-32e, also called EM64T. Intel cannot implement many select portions of the full x86-64 ISA -- largely those dealing with AMD's system interconnect and I/O capability (long story). -- Bryan J. Smith Professional, technical annoyance mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org http://thebs413.blogspot.com ----------------------------------------------------------- Americans don't get upset because citizens in some foreign nations can burn the American flag -- Americans get upset because citizens in those same nations can't burn their own

Anders Johansson wrote:

On Saturday 27 May 2006 16:54, LDB wrote:

...

I have tried to install SLES 9 on an intel IA-64 server. When yast starts up the whole installation freezes. This happens no matter what options I pass to the kernel.

Which version of SLES 9? Are you booting from the SP3 CDs?

If not, try that.

For mailing lists, for the Itanium you have suse-ia64@suse.com and for SLES you have suse-sles-e@suse.com

I know I am not using the SP3 CDs. I downloaded the non-SP CDs in hopes to patch it later. :) I will try this suggestion as well. Thanks for the ia64 list. LDB

On Sunday 28 May 2006 10:30, Jerry Feldman wrote:

LDB wrote:

...

I have tried to install SLES 9 on an intel IA-64 server. When yast starts up the whole installation freezes. This happens no matter what options I pass to the kernel.

We have a number of SLES 9 systems installed on IA64 processors in our lab, and also on TestDrive (http://www.testdrive.hp.com). We have also used SLES9 for the HP-Intel Developers Forum.

Hi Jerry, I thought 'IA64' designated a server family (with many possible mainboard + cpu combinations) not a "processor." Are you saying you've got SLES 9 running on Itanium processors 'out of the box'? Carl

On Sun, 28 May 2006 12:07:06 -0400 Carl Hartung wrote:

I went back to Google and discovered the suse-ia64 list has had 118 messages in the past year; some months without any messages at all. Is this port still active? Yes. I believe that they are on Service Pack 3. SLES10 is scheduled to go live sometime early this summer. We will probably put SLES 10 and SLED 10 on testdrive since we not have an intern to help the Testdrive administrator. We install it in our lab depending on the requests of our ISV's, but most of our engineers prefer SuSE.

-- Jerry Feldman Boston Linux and Unix user group http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9 PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

Carl Hartung wrote:

On Sunday 28 May 2006 14:38, Jerry Feldman wrote:

...

Yes. I believe that they are on Service Pack 3.

Ah! OK, so this explains your 'boot from SP3 CD' recommendation. I hope LDB is still lurking! ;-)

Thanks!

Carl

Still lurking .. So, SLES 9 SP3 boot CD or wait on SLES 10. This is good news .. Thanks, LDB

On Sun, 28 May 2006 11:16:07 -0400 Carl Hartung wrote:

I thought 'IA64' designated a server family (with many possible mainboard + cpu combinations) not a "processor." Are you saying you've got SLES 9 running on Itanium processors 'out of the box'? IA64 is Intel's Itanium processor, just as x86_64 refers to both AMD and Intel 64-bit processor extensions to the x86 architecture.

-- Jerry Feldman Boston Linux and Unix user group http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9 PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9

On Monday 29 May 2006 10:46, Bryan J. Smith wrote:

The IA-64 systems are _proprietary_ -- so there are only a few IA-64 systems that are supported, because so few exist.

IA-64 is _not_ an open architecture. Alpha, MIPS, SPARC (which is an IEEE standard), etc... are open architectures.

Hi Bryan, The important point is the next time someone inquires about SLES 9 on IA64 architecture, there /is/ a SUSE port available. They need to boot the SP3 CD to install it. SLES 10/IA64 is pending the appearance of an intern ;-) regards, Carl