Comments on: Turn an old Google Appliance into an ESX server

By: earliv

earliv — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:08:56 +0000

Joe, I bet it’s not a dell – I have the same thing – I reset the cmos as you did and when i open up the chassis it all has gigabyte all over the place – I think ours are the newer ones – I’m able to get the machine running on a UBCD – but i’m stuck at the lan drivers and I know that BIO needs to be updated but I can’t seem to find any BIOS that will stick.

Here’s what i have:

BIOS Date: 09/24/04
BIOS Type: American Megatrends
BIOS ID: 63-1029-001199-00101111-040201-ie7501-GA8IPXDR

Any help is greatly appreciated.

-e

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:03:46 +0000

Hi Joe,

How unusual. Is it a Dell PE2950 chasis?

If you get the service tag of the system and enter it into the Dell website, what does it detect the system as?

By: Joe LaGreca

Joe LaGreca — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:12:48 +0000

My BIOS jumper configuration is different than you explained: “remove the jumper labeled PWRD_EN. The jumper is located just behind the memory towards the rear of the server.”

Mine has a jumper next to the cmos battery labeled CLR_CMOS with 3 pins. With the server off, I moved the jumper over, waited a minute, then put it back. I was then able to get into the BIOS on reboot.

I got to the part where I do: 020601 /forcetype

It put a bunch of numbers on the screen, and just sat there for 10 minutes or so. I pulled the power, rebooted, and it came back up with the old google bios.

Do you have any other suggestions on how to flash the BIOS?

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 11:08:00 +0000

Hi Ryan,

That’s exactly what I did. Ended up deleting the existing configuration and created a RAID5 array on them (added in a hot spare too).

By: Ryan Sharpe

Ryan Sharpe — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 10:53:29 +0000

Fantastic instructions Dave…I am about to try it out on a search appliance I have acquired. Do you know if you are able to re-create a RAID 5 on the 5 hard drives?

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:31:00 +0000

Mark,

Just take the jumper off and leave it off . That will remove any BIOS password. If it hasn’t worked chances are you’ve removed the wrong jumper.

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:29:34 +0000

Hi Mark,

Formatting the GSA will turn it into any other PE2950.

I didn’t bother to try and recover the BIOS password they used, or the console root password.

If the group is defunct the chances are the license on it will have expired anyway. You could boot from a linux distro on a USB key or similar after clearing the BIOS password. Chroot the installation and change the password that way. Probably not worth the effort to brute force the password.

Let me know if you need more details.

By: Mark Peluso

Mark Peluso — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:27:11 +0000

Also, I moved the jumper and can now get into the BIOS. However, there is a bios password set. Is there a way to reset this to none?

By: Mark Peluso

Mark Peluso — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:26:07 +0000

Does this procedure affect the functionality of the GSA? I acquired a GSA from a now defunct group where everone got laid-off and wanted to recover the password. Is the GSA running Redhat and if so is there a known password recovery procedure?

Thanks

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 12:14:08 +0000

Glad you found it useful Tom!