Problem with Debian 4.0 Proliant software

[William McLaughlin]

A couple of months ago I got an HP Proliant D360 G6 server. I installed Debian 4.0 (etch) because this is the OS my older servers are running.

I installed the Debian 4.0 HP Value Added software from the HP site which includes separate Debian packages for hpasm, hpsmh, hp-OpenIPMI, and a number of other tools, mostly labeled version 7.8.

I have now installed all these packages, but I have not been able to get the system monitoring to talk to the hardware.

I can log into the HP System Management Homepage, but all of the fields are blank or say "N/A".

So I try to run hpasmcli (the command line tool) and it reads back:
"read_buf failed. ERROR: Failed to get SMBIOS system data. This does not seem to be a HP Proliant Server. "

Similarly, running cmastdeqd from the command line I see:
"read_buf failed. This is a Compaq machine. IS EISA = NOT OK read_buf FAILED."

But there are certain apps I can run, for instance `hplog -t` gives me the temperature data and `hplog -f` gives me the fan data (although this also does not appear on the System Management Homepage).

Does anyone know what the "read_buf failed" error refers to, or why the software might fail to recognize my machine as a Proliant server? It seems that other people have reported success here with similar configurations, any tips would be wonderful!

Thanks,
Bill

[Rob Buxton · Accepted solution]

I'd guess the agents are too old for that server model.
Looking at the HP site, only debian 5 is listed as a supported option and the support pack associated with that seems to be 8.25.

I guess you could try pulling down the later PSP and see if that works with the older debian.

[William McLaughlin]

Yeah, I was afraid of that! I appreciate the confirmation even if it's bad news.

The 8.25 support pack for Debian 5 seems to depend on newer versions of the C library and other core stuff, so I probably have to accept that getting this up will require moving to Debian 5.