[conspire] Server supermicro 1U 5013C-MT Raid1

[Daniel Gimpelevich]

On Fri, 22 Sep 2006 14:28:19 -0700, Rick Moen wrote:

> Judging by your bit about being able to continue by pressing F1, I would
> guess that it's scrambled CMOS data.  Going on that theory, you might
> want to pick the BIOS Setup option to re-set BIOS Setup settings to
> factory defaults.  That is usually on the same BIOS Setup page where the
> exit commands are.
> 
> If that doesn't do the trick, you could (1) see if Supermicro has some
> diagnostic software for download, tailored for its hardware, and (2)
> download the latest BIOS ROM image, and re-flash your BIOS.

Assuming there is no such diagnostic software, which would be a godsend to
you if it exists, this would be going from the extremely pro-forma to the
extremely drastic. There is a middle ground between resetting the CMOS to
factory defaults and reflashing the BIOS with the very same image it
currently contains, usually in the form of a jumper on the motherboard.
That would be the first thing I would try in the even I suspected a
scrambled CMOS, which is not the first thing that comes to mind given the
symptoms described. It seems much more plausible for the RAM to be at
fault, perhaps either badly seated in its socket(s) or not fully
compatible with the motherboard, especially if it's heterogeneous. After
ruling out such more obvious RAM issues, I would try memtest86+, and if
that's OK, move on to the CMOS as above. If you mess with the CMOS, no
matter what you do, you will have to redo all the BIOS settings, and the
most optimal choices for many of the options are usually quite arcane. In
any case, if a newer BIOS image is available for that motherboard than
what it's currently using, it's likely worth reflashing anyway, depending
on what was changed in the later version. On some fake-raid motherboards,
there would also be a corresponding separate flashing of the fake-raid
chip, which may be worthwhile even if you don't use it for RAID,
regardless of whether you use dm, because many such chips provide
additional, often higher-speed, ATA buses.

Disclaimer: I wrote the above message entirely off the top of my head,
rather than actually looking at the web pages for that particular
motherboard to ascertain some kind of specifics for this situation.