I was able to boot one of the 3 new Supermicro machines, which I christened c1bhd, in a diskless way (with the boot image hosted on fb, as is the case for all the other realtime FEs in the lab). This is just a first test, but it is reassuring that we can get this custom linux kernel to boot on the new hardware. Some errors about dolphin drivers are thrown at startup but this is to be expected since the server isn't connected to the dolphin network yet. We have the Dolphin adaptor card in hand, but since we have to get another PCIe card (supposedly from LLO according to the BHD spreadsheet), I defer installing this in the server chassis until we have all the necessary hardware on hand.

I also have to figure out the correct BIOS settings for this to really run effectively as a FE (we have to disable all the "un-necessary" system level services) - these machines have BIOS v3.2 as opposed to the older vintages for which there are instructions from K.T. et al.

There may yet be issues with drivers, but this is all the testing that can be done without getting an expansion chassis. After the vent and recovering the IFO, I may try experimenting with the c1ioo chassis, but I'd much prefer if we can do the testing offline on a subnet that doesn't mess with the regular IFO operation (until we need to test the IPC).