Cloning a virtual Logpoint installation to a physical machine to solve unsupported hardware issue

Scenario:-

When booting a new server hardware using the Logpoint ISO, it fails to detect the PERC H965i RAID disks. Investigation reveals that the Linux kernel version is outdated, and only the newer kernels offer support for these disks' controller; as per the official Ubuntu hardware certification documentation.

Solution:-

On the virtualmachine-LP1 [VMware ESXi] which is acting as a Template:-

1) Install Logpoint and upgrade to latest version, for example: patch LP up to v7.4.0.2

2) Install the kernel which supports the hardware, e.g.:-

apt install linux-image-5.15.0-58-generic linux-headers-5.15.0-58-generic linux-modules-extra-5.15.0-60

`mpi3mr` which is required for raid driver is bundled in linux-modules-extra package.

3) Create a new virtual_machine(eg. Ubuntu) say UBUNTU_1

3) Shutdown the vm LP1 and detach the disk --> attach the disk to vm UBUNTU_1

4) On UBUNTU_1 terminal clone the disk, use below command as reference [here sdb is LP1 disk]

dd if=/dev/sdb of=/path/to/lp_custom.bin bs=4M conv=noerror,sync status=progress

 

On physical machine

1. Boot the Ubuntu server 22.04 LTS live ISO to physical machine, also attach the disk with image file to the same physical machine [Boot in legacy mode]

sdc[270GB] is the target disk where we install LP image

Assuming sdb has the image file , we mount the sdb disk to “/mnt” to write lp_custom.bin to the new disk “sdc”.

1. Mount /dev/sdb to /mnt

mount -t ext4 /dev/sdb /mnt

2. Write to target disk

 #dd if=/mnt/lp_custom.bin of=/dev/sdc bs=4M conv=noerror,sync status=progress

 

After completion, unmount the sdb 

mkdir /simos  #mount the LogPoint--vg-root on this path
mount -t ext4 /dev/mapper/LogPoint--vg-root /simos

sudo mount --bind /dev/ /simos/dev
sudo chroot /simos

mount -t proc none /proc
mount -t sysfs none /sys
mount -t devpts none /dev/pts

grub-install --boot-directory=/boot /dev/sdb
update-grub
update-initramfs -u
exit #to exit the chroot env

Now eject the harddisk used for copying the image and boot the server with main disk If the server doesn't boot or it gets stuck at some point. Got to the grub> shell

ls (hd0,gpt2) # this should show boot files 
linux (hd0,gpt2)/vmlinuz-5.15.0-58-generic root=/dev/mapper/LogPoint--vg-root 
initrd (hd0,gpt2)/initrd.img-5.15.0-58-generic 
boot

It is expected that the server will now boot successfully with kernel v5.15.0-58-generic now run the command below as root user

grub-install /dev/sda
update-grub
update-initramfs -u

reboot

Next: configure network/ip using "change-ip" - make sure "search domain" field is NOT EMPTY