SuSE 7.0 on a Compaq Proliant 2000
There is much information on installing Redhat 6.2 on these machines and want to thank all those great people as their documentation was a big help. Actually I should backtrack, installing wasn't really any problem it was the first reboot that went bad. I will do my best to document my steps and provide a link to a kernel with the Smart array statically linked. If you have any questions, email me at pjschilling@gcstech.net and I will do my best to help. You may find links to much of the documentation and downloads needed at www.geocities.com/rlcomp_1999 THANKS to Richard Black for all his work. This is somewhat sketchy and I will improve this documentation as I have time. I wanted to get this much done before I forgot any steps.
Part 1: Why did I want to do this?
I have two Compaq Proliant 2000's with 5 2gb drives apiece, and wish to use them internally for driver storage, documentation storage, and dns. I fell into these servers and have to admit that I don't have $300 invested in obtaining both. Why SuSE, not a big Redhat fan, nothing wrong with it, just some quirky differences with other distribs and the Unixes that I work with.
Part 2: System Configuration of the Proliant
I booted to the system configuration utilities disks available at http://www.compaq.com/support/files/server/us/download/9180.html and setup the operating system as Linux, this requires the latest ROM paq available at http://www.compaq.com/support/files/server/us/download/9180.html . Configured my array with 1 logical drive (4 disks) with a spare. That was just my choice. Configured my HP2573 card. Choose your network card carefully as it is much easier to use a card that has the Compaq CFG files available. As HP supplies this file the card added to the SCU with no problem. Saved my configuration and rebooted back into the SCU and installed the System Partition Utilities. SuSE will see this partition as a Compaq System partition during the installation. This is a time consuming process as it seems to take forever for the Proliants to boot.
Part 3: Installing SuSE 7.0
You will have to install via boot disks as cannot boot to the scsi cd, AFAIK, and rather than fighting with the sim710 embedded scsi controller I installed mine via NFS. You will not be able to use the embedded network controller on the Proliant as there are not any drivers that I could find. I happened to have a couple of HP2573 10/100 ISA network cards and used one of those. The other card that should have little problem is the 3Com 3C515 10/100 ISA. Both of these cards have the Compaq CFG files available. (please research this issue carefully) You will need to partition manually as YAST will not be able to automatically do it and it would erase your Compaq System Partition anyway. On the initial YAST screen before beginning the install you will need to load some modules. I had a SuSE boot and modules disk available and first added the array module. Choose SCSI modules and then go to more modules and it will ask for the modules disk. After loading the modules disk the cpqarray module is listed in the first screen. Choose cqparray and when asked for parameters enter eisa=0x?000 where ? is the slot that the array controller is installed. This information is presented when the machine is booting, i.e. Slot 6 drive array initializing, or when you are in the SCU. Both of my Proliants are at 0x6000. This will load the array controller and give you an unknown partition error but it works for now. Then load your network card module, this will vary as to the card you are using. Once the modules are loaded you can choose Start Installation. When you start the installation from the next screen it will ask you about partitioning, already I have forgotten the exact terms it provides, but you want to manually partition. It will have a single partition created which should be p3 and will be the Compaq SCU partition. I created a Primary partition of 24mb for /boot and a 200mb for /. I then created an extended partition with the rest of the disk and split it up for /home /usr /var and the swap partition. So mine looks like this:
/dev/ida/c0d0p1 10 - 16 /boot
/dev/ida/c0d0p2 17 - 74 /
/dev/ida/c0d0p3 1 - 9 SCU
/dev/ida/c0d0p4 Extended
/dev/ida/c0d0p5 75 - 1028 /home
/dev/ida/c0d0p6 1029 - 1330 /usr
/dev/ida/c0d0p7 1331 - 1478 /var
/dev/ida/c0d0p8 1479 - 1510 swap
Save this information and continue with the installation. It will ask you how you are going to install and I chose NFS. I had another machine with the cdrom exported via NFS. When you chose NFS it will ask you whether you want to use dhcp to setup your interface or static. I choose static and followed its instructions and pointed it at the /cdrom directory of my NFS server. For the package installation I chose network server and then customized the configuration by removing all the X components and add the SuSE sources. You will need linux_suse to compile a new kernel later. Start the installation and depending on the speed of your network and the nfs server it can take some time. When asked for the second cdrom I just stopped nfs on the server and unmounted cdrom 1 and mounted cdrom 2 and restarted nfs. With my installation it used disks 1, 2 and 3. It does not install all the packages in the first go round but don't panic. If you follow the installation along it will install the rest after booting the system. When completed and you log in as root for the first time, is when the fun began for me.
Part 4: Kernel Configuration
First run fdisk, do not make any changes and enter w to write the tables. This seemed to fix the unknown partition table problem, (thanks Richard Black and Andrew E.) I then entered the /usr/src/linux directory and ran a make menuconfig. Go to the block devices and the last one should be Smart2. Highlight this entry and hit enter. This should mark it with an * to statically link it into the kernel. Exit menuconfig and save the new kernel. Then run a make dep, make clean, make bzImage or (make dep clean bzImage) to create the new kernel. Once this is completed run a make modules. After this step remove the cqparray.o file from /lib/modules/block. With SuSE you can then run a make bzlilo and it will copy the new kernel inplace and run lilo. Then run make modules_install. Now copy System.map to /, and then we will edit the /etc/lilo.conf for our system. Here is my working lilo.conf:
boot=/dev/ida/c0d0
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
initrd=/boot/initrd
linear
vga = normal # force sane state
read-only
prompt
timeout=100
# End LILO global Section
#
image = /boot/vmlinuz
label=linux
append = "smart2=0x6000 mem=64M"
root=/dev/ida/c0d0p2
This will put the boot record on
the MBR and you will have to add the SCU as a lilo choice. I will add that
option in as soon as I can find that listing that I believe Richard Black had in
his documentation. Run lilo to install. At this point you should be
able to reboot the system. I will add how to get the sim710 working as
soon as I get it configured.
Part 5: Sim710 Embedded SCSI Controller (added 4-04-01)
After getting a stable system above, I rebuilt the kernel again adding static option to the Sim710 driver and my HP network card. Also had to turn on SCSI Tape and CD support. Once rebuilt and in place, I added a second option to lilo.conf to the old kernel, just in case. Ran lilo and rebooted to a functioning Sim710 controller with cdrom and tape devices. I could not get the Sim710 to run as a module, actually works better this way. My other proliant is running Redhat with the 710 as a module and is not the most reliable way. In testing reboots with that it doesn't always load correctly. I need my machines to reliably come back up in the event of a power failure longer than the UPS can keep them up. I have yet to get auto shutdown running as I refuse to pay APC $35 for a doctored serial cable. If anyone would care to forward me the pinouts for the linux cable it would be greatly appreciated.
Here is the working lilo.conf with the Sim710 statically linked:
boot=/dev/ida/c0d0
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
initrd=/boot/initrd
linear
vga = normal # force sane state
read-only
prompt
timeout=100
# End LILO global Section
#
image = /boot/vmlinuz
label=linux
append = "smart2=0x6000 sim710=addr:0x9000,irq:14 mem=64M"
root=/dev/ida/c0d0p2
other = /dev/ida/c0d0p3
label=scu
I don't have the SCU working quite right yet. I can boot from the first floppy and then run the SCU from the system partition. I will keep working on that. Here is a link to the working kernel. www.gcstech.net/vmlinuz.cpq .