Booting: this page is retired for v10 on left for reference only

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Server Booting

This article describes the booting process of SME Server.

Installation

When booting from the installation CD you will get a boot prompt where you can simply press Enter to start the standard installation (or upgrade) routine. On i586 (e.g. VIA C3) based machines type smei586 and press Enter.

After showing the boot prompt for some time SME will start the installation process automatically. It will then afford you the opportunity to test the installation medium.

Boot Options

You can use the function keys F1 to F5 to get more information about different boot options.

	Note:
	If installing on a i586 machine you will need to replace sme with smei586 in the following commands.

Installer Boot Options

• To install SME without software RAID type

sme noraid

• To install SME without a logical volume manager type

sme nolvm

• If you are sure you want only RAID 1 you can force the installer to do so by typing

sme raid1

• In case you have 3 or more hard disks in your server and don't want to have a spare disk you can type

sme nospare

• If you want to have /, /tmp, /var, /home/e-smith/files and swap on seperate partitions type

sme multipart

• If you have a driver disk type

sme dd

• To enable the rescue mode type

sme rescue

General Boot Help

Certain hardware configurations may have trouble with the automatic hardware detection done during the installation. If you experience problems during the installation, restart the installation adding the noprobe option. With the standard installation that would be

sme noprobe

or e.g. if you don't want a software RAID:

sme noraid noprobe

and so on.

Kernel Parameter Help

Some kernel parameters can be specified on the command line and will be passed to the kernel. This does not include options to modules such as ethernet cards or devices such as CD-ROM drives.

To pass an option to the kernel use the following format:

sme <options>

If a different installation mode is desired, enter it after the option(s).

For example, to install on a system with 128MB of RAM using noprobe mode, type the following:

sme mem=128M noprobe

To pass options to modules, you will need to use the noprobe mode to disable PCI autoprobing. When the installer asks for your device type that needs an option or parameter passed to it, there will be a place to type those in at that time.

Rescue Mode Help

The installer includes a rescue mode which can be used when a system does not boot properly. The rescue mode includes many useful utilities (editor, hard drive and RAID tools, etc.) which will allow one to restore a system to a working state.

To enter the rescue mode, boot your system from the installation CD-ROM and type:

sme rescue

More

Some problems with booting that cannot or will not be fixed through development of SME7 and solutions how to bypass them can be found here.

You can run Memtest86 to check your RAM by typing

memtest

at the boot prompt and pressing Enter afterwards.

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