HP NetRAID-4M Configuration and Upgrade Guide (Release 5)

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Chapter 9 Issues and Problem Resolution
Problem: An erroneous entry for a card (a “phantom” card) may be listed in the
“Hard Drive Priority” screen in the server's BIOS. Other symptoms: the system will
not boot from the floppy drive or the system hangs.
Workaround: You may need to use the NVRAM / Clear CMOS switch (usually 5
on the server's switch block) to resolve this issue. You will lose your server BIOS
settings as they will be set back to the factory defaults.
23 32 KB option ROM function
Problem: Not enough option ROM space available to enable BIOS to allocate
memory for all embedded and plug-in adapters. With many NetRAID-4M cards
installed, all with their runtime BIOS enabled, the first card will borrow 32KB and
exit with 16KB. The next card will borrow 32KB and exit with 16KB, and so on.
Therefore, the theoretical maximum number of cards that can start (all with BIOS
enabled) is five.
Background: PC architecture has 96KB of option ROM space available between
C8000h and DFFFFh. After POST, the system BIOS scans and allocates memory
space, first for the embedded adapters such as the NIC and SCSI, then for plug-in
adapters such as the NetRAID-4M. The start order of the plug-in adapters depends
on the slot number. All adapters borrow option ROM space to initialize, and then
typically shrink down to make room for the next card to start. However, if there are
several adapters, and they do not shrink to zero, the lower priority cards (loaded at
the end by the system BIOS, usually based on its PCI slot number location) may not
have enough option ROM space to start. The server BIOS will not report an error.
During boot-up, if you press Ctrl + A, the menu will display all of the controllers.
Example: Suppose you install a card in a center slot, make a bootable partition, then
shut down and add another card in front of the first card. The partition may or may
not boot until you rearrange the boot order in the CMOS.
Workaround: Enable the BIOS only on NetRAID-4M cards that are used as a boot
device. A bootable partition must be on a card with BIOS enabled, showing up in
the option ROM space (for example, in POST), and must be the first card in the boot
order according to the system BIOS CMOS setup.
24 CCU DOS unable to record multiple controllers into a single file
Problem: The NetRAID-4M controller is capable of saving the controller and
associated container’s configurations into a file. This feature allows the user to
transfer the configuration onto another identical system and recreate the entire
configuration with a single command. In the case of multiple NetRAID-4M
controllers in a single system, there is no way to record a configuration of all the