Compaq diagnostic partition

[Jan.Albrecht at bertelsmann.de]

Hi,

I have here a running Debian installation server with FAI.
Yesterday I wanted to set up two machines, both Compaq ML530 with the same
hardware. The first was installed without problem, the second did have
problems and told me after the initial boot "unable to open inital console;
can't find init".
After some investigation I found out, that the disk layout (a 'fdisk
/dev/ida/c0d0' showed nothing than the Linux partitions) had some problems.
After I installed a RedHat and the reinstalled the debian everything was
fine. It looks like, that FAI didn't (couldn't) delete the compaq service
partition from the second machine (the first one didn't have one).
So I took a look through the FAI mails, but found only one thread which told
something about it. Is this a bug (or a feature)? I don't know how RedHat
deletes the already existing partitions (I did it with 'disk druid'), but I
think it would be a nice feature of FAI (and saves some time and nerves of
the sysadmin ;-) ).

Kind regards

Jan Albrecht

-- 
Jan Albrecht                        System Consultant                     
Bertelsmann mediaSystems NMI-DC     UNIX/NT/Windows 2000
An der Autobahn
33311 Gütersloh
Germany
Phone:  +49-5241-80-88404	      mobile: +49-172-2978914
Fax:    +49-5241-80-688404          Mail: jan.albrecht at bertelsmann.de