DL380 G4 Linux System Management Software

[Malik Perera]

Hi,
I have DL380 G4 server running Ubuntu 9.04
I wanted to install system management software to monitor the server and disk array etc.
I can see Ubuntu version available only for DL380 G5 and DL380 G4 got only Redhad and Suse Linux.
Could I install G5 Ubuntu version for G4? Any body try this or known to work?
Thank you,

[Michal Kapalka (mikap)]

hi,

i will not recomend to do it, maybe the installation will be sucessfull, but the system could be unstable.

mikap

[Daniel Frazier]

This has not been tested by HP and is not supported, but I don't know any reason it wouldn't work. The software to work with the legacy iLO in G4 is still present. Feel free to try it, I'd just recommend doing so on a non-production server until you've demonstrated stability.

[Malik Perera]

Thank you,
Well look like no body try this. At the moment sevrer at production but 2 -3 months time I have to reinstall Linux. Then I will give it a try.

[MaNU ESCaR]

Hi,

my little experiences about HP management software on non-supported distro is more about SuSE Enterprise Server vs OpenSuSE but it applies to ubuntu quite the same way : be really carefull with kernel modules like iTCO_??? , watchdogs, lm_sensors and openIPMI things as they could/would drive your system really unstable when using the open-source (non-HP) stuff.

I've ended blacklisting those kernel modules to prevent any problems : ipmi_si, ipmi_msghandler, iTCO-wdt, iTCO_vendor_support.

You're quite safe with HP's snmp stuff.

I've managed to install the whole drivers/admin stuff for SusE Linux Ent. Server 9 on OpenSuSE 9.3 by hacking the /etc/SuSE-release but finally ended with uninstalling the whole thing as it brings more headhache than real benefits.

a set of home-made small bash scripts with cron and using syslog may be enough.

You may also enable the NMI sourcing capability of the hpwdt.ko kernel module to work ( see http://www.mjmwired.net/kernel/Documentation/watchdog/hpwdt.txt ) which could be of great interest; this one (stock kernel one) seems to work really stable in my case (ML350-G3, G5 and G6 on kernels 2.6.25.20 and 2.6.31.5)

Unless you have ten's of servers running, you may think that small is beautifull when it comes to monitoring ;-)

Hope it helped,
Best Regards.