In AMM web console when you first power-on the blade right half corner of the display is chopped, you don’t get full video display on the console. This issue was there 6-7 years and still exists. Next I remember updating firmware on blades is pain, then there are issues like your keyboard control doesn’t work some time , you can find it here if your keyboard doesn’t work on IBM HS21 blades you can find the fix here.

Finally when i start installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL 5) on IBM HS21 blade I ran into other issues. I put the CD into the blade center and powered on the HS21 blade after booting RHEL 5 installer I didn’t see anything on screen –it was just went blank on video display , it was like as HS21 blade hanged there but keyboard controls were working fine, so I used the CTRL+ALT+DEL shortcut to reboot the blade. After noticing some scrolling Linux installer text I noticed message for ATI 1000 driver load right after my screen went black. I realized this sounds like a video driver issue so I tried another reboot and typed linux text to start the RHEL 5 installation in text mode. Sure enough my installation went fine and this confirmed that my video display didn’t work because of video driver issue. I searched on IBM site for help and find Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 4 update 3 (RHEL 4 – U3) installation instructions in BladeCenter section. I find some notes that Modifications are needed to run X window System (Graphical mode) during installation but wasn’t clear why? I have answer for you that there is not video driver for HS21 IBM blades on RHEL 4 and RHEL 5 Linux. Here is some good news that once you finish the RHEL 5 installation you can do changes in X server to get your RHEL 5 GUI session back but bad enough that you can only do your Linux installation on IBM HS21 blades in text mode only. Here is what I did to get my Linux X windows Graphical desktop back on RHEL 5 :

1. First Log in as root and using vi (or any other editor like nano ), edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. Before making any changes in video configuration file make sure you create a backup file. The in xorg.conf file search for the following driver line in the Device section:

Driver “ati”

Replace “ati” with “vesa” The final section looks similar to this:

Section “Device”

Identifier “Videocard0?

Driver “vesa”

VendorName “Videocard vendor”

BoardName “ATI ES1000?

EndSection

2. Turn off dpms. While still editing the xorg.conf file, search for the following dpms option line:

Option “dpms”

Change the option line to:

Option “dpms” “off”

This step is needed if you want to run the X-Windows in RHEL 4/ RHEL 5 Linux on HS21 blades. Unfortunately RHEL 5 installtion can be only done in text mode.  After I was done with these changes, I edited my /etc/inittab file to boot to runlevel 5 (graphical level).  Running “init 6? forced a reboot and from there, I was able to see my RHEL 5 desktop in the IBM blade management center. I am not sure whom to blame for this issue – IBM, ATI or Red Hat for not providing the ATI drivers on HS21 IBM Blades.

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In Red Hat Enterprise 5 Linux internet protocol version 6 (IPv6) module is turned on by default and if your network is not ready to run IPv6 then you need to turn it off on your Linux server. When I first installed my Red Hat enterprise 5 server i noticed strange IPv6 error messages in /var/log/messages file.

Here is how i turned IPv6 on my Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5) machine.

Steps to disabled IPv6 on RHEL 5:

1. In Fedora or RHEL5 Linux modules are loaded using /etc/modprobe.conf file, open the modprobe.conf file using your friendly editor vi or pico and add these line to disable autloading of IPv6 module

2. Next in your global network configuration file edit the IPv6 option using your root login session:

Change following option to NO:

3. To turn off the IPv6 tables immediately run Linux service command to disable the IPv6 service

4. For permanently disabling the ip6tables using chkconfig command so it wouldn’t start during next Linux reboot

Using these steps I was able to successfully turn of IPv6 on my RHEL5 Linux machine. If you want to turn off IPv6 on your RHEL 5 or Fedora machines you can disable it by following these steps.

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