Compaq proliant 1500 & Linux installation

[Axel Kaempfe]

hello out there,

i got an old proliant 1500 server with 2 P166 and 128 MB ram,

and i want to install Linux Suse 7.2 on this machine. but somewho it does not want to.
it allways says, not enought memory, needs more then 16 MB. but i thought 128> 16 mb, or am i wrong??

i even tried Mandrake linux 9.2 and the same picture.

i've set the operation system in the "bios" (which is on an harddrive) to Linux but nothing changes.

I can run it with W2k server and with Win NT, but i want Linux,
can anybody give me a hint, what to do???

[Bill Wood_3]

Try the following at the installation boot prompt:

"linux mem=128M"

[Axel Kaempfe]

yes, i even tried this, but nothing changed....
any other hints?

[Carlos Apolaya]

I've just installed Debian Linux on one Proliant 1500 and it wasn't an easy task... for starters, the memory problem. I solved by adding :linux "mem=64M@16M" (you can replace "64M" for "128M" here) and when you're done installing, set this parameter in /etc/lilo.conf.

This problem is related to a special way that some older Compaq servers address memory and Linux just can't figure out that you have more than 16MB of RAM.

I noticed that 2.6.x kernels does ignore the "mem" parameter... and 2.4.x SCSI kernel modules tend to crash during booting (Kernel Panic). I had to stick with one of the 2.2.x kernels.

Be advised that there is another problem with the Netflex-3 Ethernet card. The Linux driver is still buggy. Consider replacing this particular NIC for another.

Good Luck!

Carlos.