the dc7700 just don't do linux

[Frank Earl]

Heh... Guess I won't be buying 6-12 of them any time soon for the demo I'm building for a major industry segment. That attitude's going to cost them.

[kiwi_3]

In response also to the folks coming from the UK news site the Inquirer

http://uk.theinquirer.net/?article=37136

As the original author of this thread I have spend hours and hours getting some sort of acknowledgment that there is a problem with the DC7700 hardware from HP.

After getting the funniest responses from the HP phone support , variations on , 'well yes you have to ask Microsoft for SATA drivers for Linux', 'Linux is that a new game ?' I got terminated with the 'linux is not supported on this platform'.

Funny thing is that you can order the DC7700 desktops without a Windows license, and then they comes with Freedos installed and a piece of paper about the limited use of Freedos and a pointer to linux.

Seems all a bit silly that HP brings out a business line of desktops for their business customers, then goes around Europe with a Linux Roadshow
http://www.hplinuxroadshow.com/ but does not even validate that their business machines can be booted or installed using a few enterprise linux distributions.

Don't get me wrong : It would be great if HP would bring out drivers and give support like they do for Vista but I would be glad to have a business machine where you could pop in a Red Hat CD and have it actually installing.

But the DC 7700 desktops hang without the acpi=off parameter and when you use this parameter the installation takes hours and the machines feel like Pentium II 300 Mhz machines. The workarounds suggested above are appreciated but not scalable and I'm still awaiting some response from HP.

With bios version 1.09 Rev. A (11 Jan 2007) that came out to support Vista I was finally able to get a RHEL5beta2 installed on this Core 2 Duo 6600 machine with the acpi=off parameter and with a more reasonable speed (comparable with a Pentium 4 2 Mhz)

Still a long way from the speed of a Core 2 Duo 6600. So if you are a business customer wanting to try out Linux on the Desktop, stay away from HP until the company takes Linux seriously enough to validate a response.

[arthur molossol]

Hi Kiwi,

I think we need to be consistant on what we are asking.
I do agree that it is normal to be able to by PCs with no os preinstalled.

HP sells PC with
-windows
-linux
-no os, just freedos
Those PC are supported accordingly.

Support an os on a platform has a cost. If you buy a PC with no os you rely on the community to adapt the os to that platform.
And there is no doubts that into some weeks that platform will be supported under linux.
But I don't see how you can buy butter and keep the money.

Even Redhat and suse support are not free.
Debian support is free and is working on
it with some work.

If HP certify the PC on linux distribs, it cost money. Are you ready to pay more for that?

If you want a pc certified with linux, buy one which is sold as certified under linux.
Else just turn up sleeve, and work.

I think we must get rid of the impression that free os is free of charges, and that work is for free.

I want my PC to be certified, I pay for it.

HP sells PC certified under linux!

[kiwi_3]

Hello Arthur,

Thanks again for your remarks.

I think we are very clear on what we are asking from HP.

Ideally I want to be able to buy and recommend HP business desktops with Linux preinstalled but I challenge you to find a machine that comes preinstalled with Linux in the price list. http://www.hp.be/pricelists/pdf/business_desktops.pdf

You just can't buy a HP business desktop machine with a preinstalled linux and you can't order build-to-order units with Linux installed unless the amount of machines is huge.

I'm stating here that I want to pay for a preinstalled Linux OS, and I would even pay the same amount for a preinstalled Linux as for a that installed XP license.

Lacking the option of buying a preinstalled Linux, the next best thing is to order a model with FreeDos and install the OS yourself.

Our problem is that the DC7700 can't be installed with Linux on any conventional, easy way due to both a broken ACPI support in the bios and incompatible hardware.

Bringing out a mainstream business desktop for the enterprise customer in 2006 that does not allow a enterprise linux distribution to be installed does not cut it.

There is a huge hap between the HP 'marketing and communication messages' around their support and commitment to Linux and the reality in the field.

Where can I buy that business desktop with Linux ?

Why does HP wave the Linux flag and then brings out their new mainstream desktop platform that is incompatible with Linux. Where are those supposedly close ties with Linux distributors and why did HP not cooperate with them so to make their platform compatible ?

I'm stating that I want to buy those Linux desktops and want to buy those Linux support contacts but HP does not want to take my money ?

None of the currently available desktops is certified to work with Linux:
http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/317386-0-0-0-121.html

Regards,

[BenTheMeek]

Using pci=conf1 passed to the kernel I successfully managed to install and also boot Redhat AS 4 Update 3 as well. (On Bios version 1.05 though I have since taken the liberty to go to 1.09a) Out of curiosity though what are the "side effects" of using that parameter? Hardware detection loss etc? The parameter also works with a boot up of knoppix 5.1.1 as well when i tested.

[roadrash]

Have you tried Mepis linux ( http://www.mepis.org/ )? or Pclos? ( http://www.pclinuxos.com/news.php )Both can be tested like a live CD before you install them.
They have worked on every laptop ive tried them on.

[Kees denHartigh_2]

I took delivery of a dc7700 demo unit on Friday
Jan 26. It came preinstalled with winXP and 1 gig ram.
I grabbed my openSUSE 10.2 x86 32 bit installation CD's and booted acpi=off and proceeded to the installation. The process included shinking the installed winXP NTFS partition and creating new partitions and filesystems (ext3) for the OS. The installation went very smoothly. The only thing that did not work out of the box was the intergrated sound however switching to alsa sound architecture
fixed that problem. I had a fully functional dualboot dc7700 winXP/SUSE10.2 within 1 hour of
first powerup. I then used vmware workstation 5.5 and created a new winXP virtual machine.
Both the linux host and virtual winXP client
performed very simultaneosly. One of our bench mark test suites to determine system performance is matlab bench which performs several operations to determine harware performance and compares to other hardware platforms. I tested both the virtual winXP virtual machine and the linux host performance and the dc7700 outperformed many other high end hardware kits.
/proc/cpuinfo reads as follows.
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 15
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6300 @ 1.86GHz
stepping : 6
cpu MHz : 1862.047
cache size : 2048 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 0
cpu cores : 2
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 cx16 xtpr lahf_lm
bogomips : 3727.03

processor : 1
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 15
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6300 @ 1.86GHz
stepping : 6
cpu MHz : 1862.047
cache size : 2048 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 1
cpu cores : 2
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 10
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 cx16 xtpr lahf_lm
bogomips : 3724.30

I also performed a number of hdparm tests
on various disk devices and disk IO performance was comparable or better than
any other pc's I am currently running linux on.

This morning (Jan 29) I was pleasantly surprised when I loading my dreamlinux live CD and booted with acpi=off
After choosing a proper video res for my current LCD and configuring my network settings (rightclick desktop/Settings/Network settings.) I had a fully functional linux OS
running live from CD with all system devices
detected and working (including sound!)
http://www.dreamlinux.com.br/english/download.html

dreamlinux is based on debian
uname
Linux Morphix 2.6.18.1-kanotix-1 #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Nov 29 15:15:15 EST 2006 i686 GNU/Linux

I will be performing many more tests with other alternative OS's over the course of this week but if what I have seen so far is any indication of the potential for the dc7700 and alternative OS's I would have no reservations in suggesting that this hardware kit up to the task of being certified for any current linux distribution.

[Geyres Eric]

HP does not support Linux, but the Diagnostics CD given with the DC7700 is an ISOLINUX CD ! (without the driver for the ethernet card)

[Mogens Kjaer]

I had success installing Fedora 6 with
the following kernel parameters:

acpi=off hda=noprobe hdc=noprobe

After installation "hda=noprobe hdc=noprobe"
needs to be added to /boot/grub/grub.conf.

Without this, the IO performance will be
very bad.

However, after upgrading to a 2.6.19 kernel
it doesn't boot anymore, so don't use a
respin'ed FC6 to do the installation.

BIOS 1.09A makes no difference.

Both the i386 and x86_64 version of FC6
work.

I've also tried the i386 xen kernel and
have installed w2k and wxp as fully
virtualized guests.

The virtualization needs to be enabled
in the BIOS.

I do have some problems with the NIC,
it looses connection at gigabit, I had
to connect the NIC to a 100Mbit switch.
This occurs both in i386 and x86_64,
with or without xen.

[Maarten Verwijs]

> However, after upgrading to a 2.6.19 kernel
> it doesn't boot anymore, so don't use a
> respin'ed FC6 to do the installation.

Could you be more specific about the errors you get?