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[edit] Why this guide ?

Because I was planning to install Gentoo on a Dell PowerEdge 2800, I was wondering what was the best way to do.

I found some informations, so I decided to merge all the informations into this page. You can found the sources at the bottom of this page.

We will install a 64bit version of Gentoo.

English is not my mother language so, I'm sorry for all the mistakes...

[edit] Dell PowerEdge 2800 Specs

This is the configuration of my Dell PE 2800

• 5U pedestal chassis;
• Dell motherboard;
• 2 x 3 GHz dual-core Xeons with 2 x 1MB L2 cache;
• 800MHz FSB;
• Intel E7520 chipset;
• 1GB PC2-3200 SDRAM expandable to 12GB;
• LSI Logic 53C1030 dual-channel Ultra320 SCSI;
• Dell Perc 4E/Di RAID controller with 256MB PC2-3200 cache memory and battery backup unit;
• supports RAID0, 1, 5, 10, 50 and JBODs;
• 2 x 76GB Maxtor Cheeta 10K7 Ultra320 hard disks in hot-swap carriers;
• 2 x Intel PRO/1000 MT Gigabit Ethernet;
• hot-plug PCI Express slots 8x and 4x;
• 3 x 133MHz PCI Express and 1 x 32-bit PCI slots;
• DRAC 4 remote management card;
• embedded IPMI 1.5 BMC;
• ATi Radeon 7000 graphics;
• 930W hot-swap power supply;
• Dell OpenManage software suite supplied

[edit] Installation

[edit] Loading the Installation CD

I'm using the 2006.1 AMD64 Installation Install CD.

Apparently, it's better to use the docache argument with at least 1 GB of memory. (It didn't work from my side.)

 gentoo docache 

This will prevent any problems with the CD spinning down and hanging the system. You should be able to do the install sucessfully if you omit this argument, but it will save you some headaches.

[edit] Step by step

I basicly followed the steps in the Gentoo Linux x86 handbook.

For some steps, I did the following specifics things.

[edit] Preparing the Disks

(chapter 4)

If you are using the Perc4i regardless of how many drives are mounted, the hardware RAID will create a single device for each logical drive. These will be (dependent on ammount of logical drives, starting with 0):

/dev/sda

/dev/sdb

etc...

[edit] Choosing the right stage release

Normaly, you should have a Xeon x86_64 processor (or 2 :D). If you are unsure, first check that.

[edit] Recognizing x86_64 Enabled CPU (Useful for Xeon(tm) Processors)

cat /proc/cpuinfo

Check for the 'lm' flag. If you read somewhere that Xeon nocona cpu has to support SSE3, this is true but it's named PNI in cpuinfo.

[edit] Xeon w/EM64T (Intel) (also Pentium 4 P6xx)

vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 15
model           : 4
model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU XXXXMHz

[edit] Now you are sure

Choose the amd64 stage relase. (releases/amd64/current/stages/)

[edit] Configuring the Compile Options

[edit] make.conf settings

CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=nocona -O2 -pipe"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"

If you have hyperthreading turned on, then each processor counts as two logical CPUs, so if you have two hyperthreaded CPUs, then you should use MAKEOPTS="-j5" in your make.conf. This wont affect the generated code but might make your compiles faster.

MAKEOPTS="-j5"

-O3 flag degraded OpenSSL benchmark 0-2% depending on the test. GnuPG became ~1% slower.

[edit] Choosing right make.profile

I suggest you to use the amd64 server specific tree.

ln -snf /usr/portage/profiles/default-linux/amd64/2006.1/server /etc/make.profile

[edit] Configuring the Kernel

( ) AMD-Opteron/Athlon64
(X) Intel EM64T

This will enable CONFIG_MPSC which states:

Optimize for Intel IA32 with 64bit extension CPUs
(Prescott/Nocona/Potomac)

( ) PC-compatible

Enable the LSI Logic New Generation RAID Device Drivers and all subsections in the SCSI/Low Level Drivers section (Compiled In)

Device Drivers  --->
  SCSI device support  --->
    SCSI low-level drivers  --->
      <*> LSI Logic New Generation RAID Device Drivers
        <*> LSI Logic Management Module (New Driver)

Note that you must compile the SCSI controller as part of the kernel and not as a module (you can not load modules before you bring up the partition). The following are from 2006.1. Using Perc4i RAID controller.

Enable Intel Gigabit network

Device Drivers  --->
  Network device support  --->
    Ethernet (1000Mbits)  --->

For the rest of the kernel, just make sure you use the dmesg output and lspci output to get all the drivers you need. Its best to leave out any support for hardware you know you won't use (i.e. usb, framebuffer, etc).

For reference, I used the gentoo-sources kernel instead of the vanilla because there are a few patches that have been added that seem to work better. The default kernel on Gentoo for the AMD64 is the 2.6.x series. If you need to use a 2.4.x kernel, be aware that support has practically been abandoned because these machines work so much better using 2.6.x.

[edit] End of installation

So, if you read this, I hope you were able to finish and successfully installed your Gentoo on Dell PowerEdge 2800. I'll try to add furter informations later to tweak your installation to perfectly feet to the hardware.

If you find something's wrong, or things to add...

[edit] Sources

• Gentoo Linux x86 Handbook
• HOWTO INTEL XEON WITH EM64T Optimizations
• Dell PowerEdge 2850