Linux on Compaq Servers

I´m using Linux on Compaq servers installed for my clients since 1999, without any problems, but I´m not using the managment agents because my clients are mostly small companies that have no managment console.

You can find drivers on the URL: ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/drivers/linux/released
or on the regular web site http://www.compaq.com/support/files/server/us/index.html
Other informations are available on the URL: ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/servers/linux/
General informations about Linux on Compaq ProLiant servers can be found on http://www.hp.com/products/servers/linux, there should be several links.
There seems to be more support for RedHat because at this moment (December 2003) there are drivers for all versions from 6.1 to 8.0 and Enterprise Linux 2.1, SuSE is only supported for the SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 7) and for the versions 7.0 and 7.2, but you should find the drivers also for your kernel version.

HP itself is using Linux internally (the newer SmartStart versions are Linux-based) and supports several open source projects - important because drivers are more and more part of the standard distributions.

All needed drivers for the hardware of recent ProLiants are in the standard installations of SuSE and RedHat, so the installation should be faster and easier than a Windows installation.

Attention : there are problems installing RedHat Linux 7.x on Compaq Servers using the Compaq Smart Array controller that is using the cciss driver (the cpqarray driver works without any problem). There is a special procedure modificating the mkinitrd script to make it work, since the cciss drivers are in a subdirectory of the /dev directory, /dev/cciss). In RedHat Linux 8.0 this error is fixed.
SuSE Linux 8.x and the beta version of United Linux will not work on Compaq Servers without modifications of the boot parameters. In safe mode the OS boots, and you need to add the parameters "apm=off acpi=off disableapic 3" in the bootmanager configuration (menu.lst in /boot/grub/).

The installation of Debian Linux 3.0 Woody (I have tried with R2) on ProLiants with the Smart Array 641/642 controllers will fail, and the BroadCom network controller will not be recognized. This is because the Smart Array controller not works with kernels before 2.4.21, and 3.0R2 has kernel 2.4.20. These problems are know, but there is no easy solution. The best solution is to install a commonly used PCI NIC and a SCSI disk on the integrated disk controller (Adaptec recognized by the standard installation), install plain Woody, install newer kernel sources (I have used 2.4.22), build a new kernel and transfer the installation to the RAID disks. Afterwards the machine works very fast. If you have this machine to install, here you can find a detailled description and a deb package for the 2.4.22 kernel.

Installation of the Agents

best to follow the procedure on the 2nd SmartStart CD (Compaq Managment), there should be an install script. You shoud find it in the folder /AGENTS/LINUX/ENG/COMPAQ.

For installation of the agents on Debian Linux please see here: http://www.sk-tech.net/support/HPrpm2deb.sh.html.

Important : Compaq Software checks the file /etc/issue for OS type and version

To install manually; use rpm -i in the following order
cpqhealth*.rpm
cmanic*.rpm
cmastor*.rpm
cmasvr*.rpm
cmafdtn*.rpm
cpqrid*.rpm

To install cpqhealth on a unsupported Linux system use the RedHat version, it should install a source version that you can compile and install with a makefile. But AFAIK the agents are available only in binary versions, not in source code.

After the installation and activation of cpqhealth you should be able to see the integrated web server on port 2301, ie. http://localhost:2301. After a correct installation some events like a disk error (try to extract a disk shortly from a RAID array....) should generate a mail to root@localhost.