I think what happens is, you slide the grommets in from the big hole, then slide them over into the little hole. Then you put your drive into place, and then put the 6-32 3/8" through the inner grommet hole, into the hard drive.

I will be home tomorrow morning, waking up around 9, tomorrow afternoon I may go out for errands and whatnot, and then away in the evening. Thank you.

I'll get hold of you.

Check these folks out http://www.earsc.com/hddtechniques.asp

http://www.earsc.com/pdfs/shldBlt2.pdf

Those are perfect, unfortunately they are manufacturers and don't give any retail links. :(

OKAY! Thanks to a visit from xoB and his handy coffee can of grommets and screws, both disk drives are now mounted in the server!! Thanks xoB!!! :)

Aaaaaaaand it doesn't boot. :(

Back to the documentation...

OH! It doesn't boot because the monitor doesn't find it when auto-configuring which input it thinks is "on"

Replace monitor, system boots! Starting configuration.

Always another hitch dep't. Or rather, always the *next* hitch*, because getting these things done is simply hitch after hitch.

I want to run the two drives in a RAID 1 configuration (mirroring), and the system BIOS has allowed me to create a "virtual disk" showing both drives as one single drive, in hardware.

Unfortunately the first choice of operating systems, Centos, does not recognize the hardware disk controller's wishes and wants to install to the physical disks. If we were lazy, we'd just give up and forget the RAID idea. But we're not, so the project stops for the day with more research is needed.

I expect it will be a case of getting the controller's drivers into the mix as a part of the installation process.

Why cant I get just one screw. Believe me I know what to do....

Ah. The PERC 100 RAID controller only works under Windows.

dammit gaw dammit

Very well, we must proceed with SOFTWARE RAID. Less than ideal... but screw it, we must proceed.

That's why I left as soon as the screwing was done, I don't do kinky booting stuff... unless maybe if you get me drunk first. :haha:

I have a margarita here with your goddamn name on it. Also a small letter sized package, no ricin/anthrax/cooties though. Come on over and get them both.

You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Then who the hell else are you talking... you talking to me? :haha:

I'm aiming for Sunday for server installation day. Don't know if it'll make it. This installation has been harder than it should be!

The following will be Greek to 100% of you, but I know you wanted to read about it!

I chose CentOS for a Linux distribution because it supports long term security updates. The installation has not gone perfectly so far. Because this server doesn't come with a DVD drive, I decided to try booting it from USB flash drive, and the details for setting that up are pretty arcane.

(Here it sits on my coffee table, where I had to put it in order to get to a wired ethernet connection, since my router is in my living room and I only had a 10 foot cable. The gibberish on the screen is part of me trying to solve the Flash drive boot problem in longhand.)

http://cellar.org/2013/serverinstall1.jpg

It's been many hours trying to convince the system that it should install, because the point where it generally fails is about 15 minutes in, with a lot of keyboard and mouse input needed to get there.

I may try setting up a Windows-based PXE boot which can install software over my local intarwebs. Or I may see if the system can boot from a USB DVD drive. I dunno let's see.

Urrgh. Good luck... my experience is, if it doesn't like a USB flash drive, it won't like the USB external drive.

Well actually the external DVD is working! The server BIOS picked it up as an external DVD and treated it differently than just another drive. That's what got in the way of the flash install.