Installing 32-bit CentOS 6 On A New Lenovo System X3650 M5 Server?

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Is there any known incompatibility with the latest 32-bit (i386) CentOS 6 and the latest Lenovo x3650 M5 servers? I’ve been running i386 CentOS 6.X on 3 year old x3650 M4 servers without any issues. Our development environment has not been ported to 64-bit (x86_64) yet, so we are stuck using i386 for another few months. When I try to boot from the netinstall ISO image I just get a “Boot Failed” message. Has anyone had similar issues, and more importantly, figured out a way to workaround it?

Alfred

4 thoughts on - Installing 32-bit CentOS 6 On A New Lenovo System X3650 M5 Server?

  • you do know, x86_64 runs i386 apps as long as you install the suitable i386 libraries, right?

    you might try the minimal ISO. thats my default install image, then I
    use yum to install everything my environment needs.

    —
    john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz

  • Yes, but we have to change all of our Makefiles to use -m32 and there are some other issues as well. We are moving towards 64-bit but are not quite there yet, and I thought I would initially install 32-bit CentOS 6 on our x3650 M5 system as I did on the x3650 M4 systems.

    I have a completely automated installation via kickstart, so I usually just use the net install ISO image, but I will try the minimal or perhaps even the LiveCD ISO when I am back in the office on Monday.

    Alfred

  • I’ll answer my own question now that I’ve figured it out in case anyone else is in the same boat. After the i386 CentOS 6 net install ISO failed to boot, I tried the LiveCD and minimal ISOs which failed in the same way. Then I tried various x86_64 ISO images to no avail. The only ISO image that I was able to boot from was the latest Ubuntu 16.04 LTS release. But I really need i386 CentOS. I was able to install it by clicking on a Legacy checkbox in the BIOS, which brought up a different list of boot devices and I was finally successful in booting from the ISO image. I then had to finagle the BIOS to always boot in legacy mode so that it would recognize the i386 CentOS boot partition on each powerup.

    Alfred

  • –pUjTg6D3nLkA5but2QHTPUrNafDqkp530
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    Yes, CentOS-6 32bit can not boot UEFI or secureboot at all, and needs
    ‘Legacy Boot’ enabled. The CentOS-6 x86_64 can boot ‘UEFI with secureboot off’, but not secureboot.

    CentOS-7 (x86_64) can install on secureboot or ‘UEFI w/secureboot off’, or legacy.

    CentOS-7 (Altarch i386) can install on ‘UEFI w/secureboot off’ or legacy, but no secureboot.

    Thanks, Johnny Hughes

    –pUjTg6D3nLkA5but2QHTPUrNafDqkp530