Cruel and unusual problems with Proliant ML350

[Ivan Voras]

Ivan Voras wrote:

> - The showstopper: Sysinstall completes (though slowly), but on reboot
> the loader doesn't go further than the "F1 prompt" :( This is very
> curious, since when booting from install CD the loader shows it
> recognizes the CD drive and drives A: and C:, so BIOS seems to be ok. If
> I understand the loader correctly, after the "F1 prompt" phase, the
> loader should transfer control to the boot block of the first slice?

There's something unusual going on and I don't know what else to try. 
Finally, after fiddling with various options, I've sort-of got it to 
work by creating two slices (s1, s2), setting root partition on s1a and 
the rest (/usr, /var, etc.) on s2. Now, the "F1 prompt" boot stage 
behaves like this:

- if I leave F1 to be the default, boot fails, beeping when trying to 
boot like before. Nothing changes when pressing F1 multiple time (it 
always fails and beeps).

- if I leave F2 to be the default, boot fails with "invalid partition" 
message and escapes to the boot: prompt

- if I press F1 and then F2, it beeps on F1 but after F2 is pressed it 
proceeds to boot from s1a!

I really don't know what is going on. The disk array is supposed to be 
"clean", without hidden partitions (at least, fdisk doesn't see any).

Is the loader re-reading the table after a failed boot (with F1), and 
something corrupts the data on first read? Or maybe it's a boot0 bug?

Any ideas? As it stands, the machine can't boot unattended, which makes 
it unusable.

More info:

at the /boot/loader stage, lsdev shows disk0 as A:, but the floppy 
doesn't exist on this machine, and disk1 as C:, with normal partitions 
(e.g. disk1s1a, etc.)