[CentOS] prepare for centos on compaq dl380 G1

Fri Oct 28 21:25:44 UTC 2005
John Hinton <webmaster at ew3d.com>

Grant McChesney wrote:

> On 10/28/05, *Robert* <roberth at abbacomm.net 
> <mailto:roberth at abbacomm.net>> wrote:
>
>     greetings
>
>     i have a few dual P3 Compaq 1850R units and use compaq smartstart
>     5.5 on
>     them before a CentOS 4 load
>
>     i have acquired some dual P3 Compaq DL380 G1 i.e. Generation 1
>     units and am
>     wondering which specific smartstart download i should be using for
>     them from
>     this URL below
>
>     h18004.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/subscription/ssdownloads.asp
>     <http://h18004.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/subscription/ssdownloads.asp>
>
>     would someone please share their experience on this so i dont have
>     to waste
>     time and bandwidth?
>
>     thank you and kind regards
>
>
>
> Robert:
>
> The latest SmartStart (7.40) should work with the DL380 G1.  The 
> latest firmware update cd (7.40) should work on it as well.  I must 
> admit I haven't tried since SmartStart 7.10 a little while ago.  I 
> know for sure the latest firmware update cd will _NOT_ work on the 
> 1850R.  The NIC is not supported and causes it to hang on startup.  
> Good luck.
>
> Grant

Hmmm... I had this firmware update issue on a dual 550 1850R. The 
machine would boot to the single kernel, but not to the smp kernel. I 
added/edited the following to the kernel options for the smp kernel

ro root=LABEL=/ apm=off noapic rhgb quiet

I was seeing some apic errors on boot up from the beginning and under 
both kernels, which is why I added that. But I really think the issue 
was the apm. It might make sense that the updated apm is adding/changing 
a ?wake on lan? or some such which the kernel can't handle? But, anyway, 
since adding those entries, it has booted perfectly every time. I notice 
CentOS configured the NIC card as eth0 and the onboard NIC as eth1 (this 
seems a common occurance at least to me.. sort of random.. maybe 
whichever driver it finds first?). But the onboard NIC is working fine 
on this machine. And I have the added benefit of not seeing any errors 
going by during bootup.

Best,
John Hinton