Dell PowerEdge R630

User Support HCL Reports
1

Dell PowerEdge R630

---
layout:
  'hcl'
type:
  'Rack Mount Chassis'
hvm:
  'yes'
iommu:
  'yes'
slat:
  'yes'
tpm:
  'unknown'
remap:
  'yes'
brand: |
  Dell Inc.
model: |
  PowerEdge R630
bios: |
  2.16.0
cpu: |
  Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2690 v4 @ 2.60GHz
cpu-short: |
  E5-2690 v4
chipset: |
  Intel Corporation Xeon E7 v4/Xeon E5 v4/Xeon E3 v4/Xeon D DMI2 [8086:6f00] (rev 01)
chipset-short: |
  Xeon E5 v4
gpu: |
  Matrox Electronics Systems Ltd. G200eR2 [102b:0534] (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
  Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Lexa PRO [Radeon 540/540X/550/550X / RX 540X/550/550X] [1002:699f] (rev c7) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
  Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Cape Verde GL [FirePro W4100] [1002:682c] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
gpu-short: |
  G200eR2
  RX 550
  FirePro W4100
network: |
  Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM57416 NetXtreme-E Dual-Media 10G RDMA Ethernet Controller [14e4:16d8] (rev 01)
  Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM57416 NetXtreme-E Dual-Media 10G RDMA Ethernet Controller [14e4:16d8] (rev 01)
  Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries NetXtreme BCM5720 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe [14e4:165f]
  Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries NetXtreme BCM5720 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe [14e4:165f]
memory: |
  130850
scsi: |
  WD Blue SA510 2. Rev: 00WD
usb: |
  4
certified:
  'no'
versions:
  - works:
      'partial'
    qubes: |
      R4.2.4
    xen: |
      4.17.5
    kernel: |
      6.13.7-1
    remark: |
      FIXME
    credit: |
      @q4u
    link: |
      FIXLINK

Remarks

  • It’s the 8 bay / 3x low profile version
  • Using a M2 PCIe adapter which the installer detects just fine yet the vendor firmware does not recognize it as boot medium / at all
  • Booting from SATA SSD (1st slot), M2 as secondary storage pool works fine
  • Monitors attached to either of the AMD cards don’t get recognized. But the cards themselves show up correctly in qvm-pci and lspci. So no video output.
    EXCEPT once the Qubes shutdown progress bar screen kicked in on the monitor attached to the RX550’s DVI port.

Working

  • Ethernet
  • USB

Not working

  • TPM (not present)
  • Sound (not present)
  • PS/2 keyboard (not present)
  • Boot from M2
  • Video output other than VGA

Attachments

Dell_R630_hcl.yml (1.5 KB)

3 Likes
2

Hey @Insurgo,

mainly because of the desire to boot from M2 but also for security reasons I wanted to get LinuxBoot on this thing.

I learned the hard way that the linuxboot repo is rather a collection/ showcase of PoCs to convey the concept and not really something one simply builds in an evening.

Followed along Trammel Hudson’s post and got the stock rom extracted but when trying to build this the headaches started.

From your post in Heads Testing I can see that the board was still there less than 2 years ago although UNTESTED. But that’s way better and more recent than anything I dealt with to this point.

The story is known to me only very vaguely that linuxboot and heads emerged from NERF and I never got my feet wet with either of them.

Tomorrow I’ll look into how to build heads and when the board fell out precisely but maybe you’ve got some general advice for me? Anything to be wary of?
Any thoughts or recommendations would be much appreciated really.

2 Likes
3

You should ask those questions under linuxboot community. Unfortunately, there was one board tested under Heads and it was qemu-linuxboot, which after NERF splitting into linuxboot and Heads, server machines under UEFI (not coreboot) went not only untested, but unmaintained.

I would not even know where to start to bring that board back under Heads and stitch an UEFI based Rom WITH Heads today. The knowledge was lost, until it is brought back.

That would be a nice experiment to try. Do a searxh for linuxboot book, try to join Slack channel and keep us posted?

1 Like