I recently bought a Dell R440 from eBay, 8 drive since I have a bunch of SSDs laying around.
Specs:
2x Intel Xeon 4114 (10C)
8x16GB DDR4 RDIMM (128GB)
Dell HBA330
4x Samsung Evo 870 1TB SATA
4x WD Blue 1TB SATA
No GPU, but will be installed later.
No Dell BOSS.
No PERC PCI controller
Created bootable USB drive from: Rufus (Windows) and BalenaEtcher (MacOS).
Boot to USB.
Can't do graphical install due to no VGA cable (shocking, I know), iDRAC is Express only (waiting for Enterprise license).
Attempt Terminal (UI), Terminal (UI, Serial Console), Terminal (UI, nomodeset), Terminal (UI, Debug Mode).
All of those end up the same: Initial ramdisk. It never moves past that.
I've:
Tested RAM via iDRAC
- Attempted to run memory test, device becomes unresponsive.
- Attempted to run memory test via bootable drive, device becomes unresponsive.
Swap 128GB RAM from known good R440 into new R440
- Does not boot, but known good R440 boots with swapped RAM.
- Dropped RAM to 16GB to each CPU
Removed all but one SSD
- Erased all SSDs
Switch boot from UEFI to Legacy
Same BIOS versions on both devices.
All components are green in iDRAC.
All components firmware were updated before arriving to me.
Currently rolling back BIOS to see, but any insight would help. I'm just trying to do a fresh install.
Edit: Rolled back BIOS, issue persist.
Edit2: So because I had no VGA cable and didn't have iDRAC Enterprise for VNC... turns out you can get a iDRAC trial license. https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/...ation-with-servicenow-and-dpat-trial-licenses
What was happening is I was ssh'ing into iDRAC, then in iDRAC doing `console com2` to view the iDRAC console thinking it'd be 1:1 to VNC. Well while it was stuck at "initial ramdisk" in iDRAC console, it was actually in terminal UI in VNC. I rebooted into GUI setup... low and behold, stuck in iDRAC console but could set up the device with no issue...
So the VGA cable / iDRAC was needed the entire time.
Specs:
2x Intel Xeon 4114 (10C)
8x16GB DDR4 RDIMM (128GB)
Dell HBA330
4x Samsung Evo 870 1TB SATA
4x WD Blue 1TB SATA
No GPU, but will be installed later.
No Dell BOSS.
No PERC PCI controller
Created bootable USB drive from: Rufus (Windows) and BalenaEtcher (MacOS).
Boot to USB.
Can't do graphical install due to no VGA cable (shocking, I know), iDRAC is Express only (waiting for Enterprise license).
Attempt Terminal (UI), Terminal (UI, Serial Console), Terminal (UI, nomodeset), Terminal (UI, Debug Mode).
All of those end up the same: Initial ramdisk. It never moves past that.
I've:
Tested RAM via iDRAC
- Attempted to run memory test, device becomes unresponsive.
- Attempted to run memory test via bootable drive, device becomes unresponsive.
Swap 128GB RAM from known good R440 into new R440
- Does not boot, but known good R440 boots with swapped RAM.
- Dropped RAM to 16GB to each CPU
Removed all but one SSD
- Erased all SSDs
Switch boot from UEFI to Legacy
Same BIOS versions on both devices.
All components are green in iDRAC.
All components firmware were updated before arriving to me.
Currently rolling back BIOS to see, but any insight would help. I'm just trying to do a fresh install.
Edit: Rolled back BIOS, issue persist.
Edit2: So because I had no VGA cable and didn't have iDRAC Enterprise for VNC... turns out you can get a iDRAC trial license. https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/...ation-with-servicenow-and-dpat-trial-licenses
What was happening is I was ssh'ing into iDRAC, then in iDRAC doing `console com2` to view the iDRAC console thinking it'd be 1:1 to VNC. Well while it was stuck at "initial ramdisk" in iDRAC console, it was actually in terminal UI in VNC. I rebooted into GUI setup... low and behold, stuck in iDRAC console but could set up the device with no issue...
So the VGA cable / iDRAC was needed the entire time.
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