RedHat install on ProLiant DL385 G6

[Chad Darnielle]

I have been having the worst time getting our Red Hat install kickstart process working on our new DL385 G6's.

First, I'm noticing that the minimum supported Red Hat Update for RHEL4 is 4.6 per the HP url below.

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/servers/linux/dl385g6-drivers-cert.html

In my testing RHEL 4.8 is the minimum version because that version has a version of the cciss driver that can actually understand a Smart Array P410. I'm not sure what HP means by minimum in this context, if 4.6 will run with ancillary drivers per HP's support website?

Second, the move to 4 embedded NIC ports from the standard 2 has been the worst change. Since Linux seems to enumerate the NIC's in the following order.

chassis NIC port#1 - eth2 (03:00.0)
chassis NIC port#2 - eth3 (03:00.1)
chassis NIC port#3 - eth0 (41:00.0)
chassis NIC port#4 - eth1 (41:00.1)

I've been playing with various install time kernel options & kickstart options with not a lot of success in having the chassis NIC port numbers match the OS interface ordering. We typically will only connect two Ethernet cables to the server.

I'm curious if this has been a pain in neck for anyone else and how you decided to work around it.

Thanks!

[Glenn Matthys]

You can force eth* assignments in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth* using the MAC address of the NIC.

I don't think you can change the naming during installation, I guess you'll have to live with the NIC's not named in the right order.

You should always use the latests available version of the OS, there is no reason to use RHEL 4.6 over 4.8. Preferably use 5.4.

[Shannon Baker]

We are encountering the same issue. Does this link from the RedHat site mean that only 4.6 is supported on the DL385 G6?
https://hardware.redhat.com/show.cgi?id=502235
Thanks