Linux compatibilty: Blades and ILO

[Morten Lange]

Hello. I hope I??m in the right forum...

I have had a go at installing Linux on a BL20p and ran into some problems. I have it running now, but the scripted install did not find the kickstart file. Red Hat install (anaconda) says it does not find ks.conf, while I know the kikcstart file is named something like "bl20p.ks.cfg" .

Also I am a bit dismayed by the fact that it seems one has to invest in Windows to be able to install Linux on these blades and to use the iLO. ( Only MSIE supported even it seems)
Finally I cant see any method for sending SysRq to the console. ( the MSIE iLO console has provisions for sending many key combitantions but nothing with SysRq. I confess I have not read much about the telnet iLO console... )

Best Regards,
Morten Lange

[Doug de Werd · Accepted solution]

The Linux edition of the Rapid Deployment Pack (RDP) will be available any day now, which eliminates the need for a Windows console. You can get more information at:

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/management/rdple/index.html

You didn't say what version of RH, but you should make sure you have all of the latest SW/FW. The link for this for RH 7.3 is:
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/locate/86_4928.html

Thanks,
Doug

[Morten Lange]

Thanks Doug,

I'm very happy to hear that HP will cater for customers that will keep run their "blade business" without having to mix MS-Windows into the equation. I hope they acknowledge the need for the possibilty of sending Alt-SysRq-s and other SysRq combinations.


We will be running RH AS/ES 2.1, and RH 8.0 and later 9, plus possibly Gentoo Linux later.

I tried to find similar documets for RHAS 2.1 but got a "connection reset by peer". ( OK it works now, only a temporary glitch )

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/locate/88_4928.html


One thing that I ran into when installing seems to have been caught by HP, the malfuction of the BMC5700 driver :

http://wwss1pro.compaq.com/support/reference_library/viewdocument.asp?source=EU020523_CW01.xml&dt=3


P.S:

I "only" gave you 8 points because I asked so many questions in the same posting and according to the point-awarding guidelines 10 means that all was answered, but 7 answered in part. Hope that's OK :-)

[Louis Bouchard]

Hello,

This is a repost of my answer in the Linux Forum. Basically, the sysrq key need to be remapped to another key in order to use the remote console facility. This example shows how to map it to PgDown.

I used /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq-key which is usually mapped to 84 (PrintScreen) and remapped it to 109 (PgDown). Here hare the steps :
1) Add "kernel.sysrq-key = 109 into /etc/sysctl.conf
2) Modify the kernel value with
# echo 109 > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq-key
3) Map PgDown+p to a hot key in the Virtual Console for ILO (to test that SysRq is working)
You should see the content of the registers.
Hope It helps,
...Louis

[Morten Lange]

Thanks for the replies, and good help !

Now it seems this is all moving in the right direction :-)

I have a workaround for the SysRq and for people wanting to use Linux as the management platform a Linux release of the Remote Deployment Pack is underway.
The problem with the missing kickstart file is also history. It changed when moving the RDP to a new machine an d insuring the installation scripts were compatible with the NFS images.
Subsequently we could tailor the kickstart file to our needs.
After iLO BIOS/firmware(?) upgrade to 1.4 I colud use other browsers like Opera, but alas the telnet interface to ILO became _very_ unstable. Hopefully it will reappear as an SSH interface to the "console". Very handy for logging the messages on the system console for instance.


Best Regards,
Morten