dell poweredge servers disk partitions

hello all

i just got a couple dell poweredge servers, both with sata raid. there is a small 14 mb fat16 partition already on each machine. i've been looking through my docs but i can't for the life of me figure out what its for. any ideas? if i get rid of that partition will i have problems?

also, i'm having a hell of a time getting linux on this machine. even if lilo installs, it kernel panics on boot, and grub wont install at all.

Those partitions are Dell utility partitions and I would leave them there. Make sure you have the right modules for the HDD controller on those PE servers. Call Dell and make sure you can get the controller modules for Linux. I have 3 PE servers, but I use SCSI RAID so Im not much help on the SATA side for Linux :S

i got it all sorted out, actually you can remove that partition and be ok, it's just there for initial bootup. i have successfully installed debian woody on all machines, and i have a working 2.6 kernel with all the necessary drivers compiled as modules as a .deb package. i also have the kernel headers as a .deb, if anyone is interested. all SATA and SCSI RAID controllers dell uses on 90 % of it's servers are supported. i know for a fact it works on 750 series with SATA and 2850s with SCSI. all the modules i needed are included in the 2.6 kernel.