HP NetServer LH4r

[Aaron Freed]

Originally, the machine had two Pentium II Xeon 400 MHz CPUs. I have since removed those (and then someone seems to have absconded with them) and replaced them with four PIII Xeon 500 MHz CPUs. In addition, the machine has the built-in RAID array (6* 9.1 GB), an add-on Matrox G200 video card and the HP-supplied Intel EtherExpress PRO 100.

I do not have the CD's that would normally be supplied by HP with this machine.

I have _NOT_ yet upgraded the Firmware on this machine. It is still vintage circa 1998 to 2000 from what I can see.

I tried to put various versions of Linux based on Kernel 2.4 on this machine.

All appears to work fine except for one problem:

The machine detects _two_ network adapters where there is only one card installed! It sees the original adapter, eth0, which is in PCI slot 4, but the MAC address is all FF's. It then sees an "eth1", which appears to be another HP-supplied Intel EtherExpress Pro 100.

Not surprisingly, the network adapter does not work, and the machine constantly reports:

eth0: command 0x3002 did not complete! Status=0xffff

or something similar (like eth0: Time out waiting for command 0x3002(or some number) to complete.)

I've tried "ifconfig eth0 down", followed by "ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.212 netmask 255.255.255.0 up", but that only hung the system.

If I use a version of Linux based on kernel 2.2, e.g. RedHat 6.1, I do not run into any problems at all!

I am guessing that the problem has something to do with an outdated firmware (or firmwares) and the fact that the machine has 8 PCI slots, evidently arranged in two banks of four, corresponding slots from each bank paired to share IRQs. Perhaps the old versions of Linux are "too dumb" to scan the second set of four PCI slots, and therefore, the "phantom" eth1 never gets "autodetected".

Currently, the machine is set up to arbitrate PCI slot interrupt assignments through "SMART" mode rather than "FIXED" mode.

Does anyone have any idea how I might go about getting a recent version of Linux (2.4-based kernel or later) to work on this machine?

Thank you, in advance, for your response!

[Greg Carlson]

Aaron,

First start off by clearing the CMOS, boot to F2 to save and exit, then flash the bios, flash your netraid fw. you can get the fw, bios and drivers all from here:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DriverDownload.jsp?locale=en_US&pnameOID=15383&taskId=135&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=50450&submit.y=0&submit.x=0〈=en&cc=us

Next make sure you have just a base configuration with just one PCI card in the system, go into F2 and lock down the IRQ for your NIC and disable a com port or parrallel port to free up an IRQ.

See where that gets you first..

Ciao,
Greg

[Aaron Freed]

To Greg Carlson:

I'll try your suggestion. So far, 5 points. I checked the link you suggested, but did not find anything for Linux. Since I have heard that Linux (Particularly RedHat 8.0) is supposed to work on this machine, I will assume that the lack of drivers for this machine simply means that no special drivers are required. (Given that the machine works well with RedHat 6.1, I figure this is a safe bet.)

If the flashing process works and I can install the desired Linux version, I will return and leave more (lots!) of points. If the system does not allow me to leave any more points, I will ask you to just e-mail me another suggestion (even if it is a nonsense one) so I can leave you more points.

Thank you again!

P. S. What is it that F2 does and when do I press it? And what is F11 supposed to do? I have heard that pressing F11 during boot-up (rather than F2) leads to some sort of special BIOS configuration that allows me to reset the BIOS to manufactuerer's default. Is this true?

[Aaron Freed]

Locking down IRQs for a particular card????


Anyone know if there is a special procedure to locking down IRQs in the HP LH4r? I have seen a way to identify the IRQ's, which can be configured as either "Smart" or "Fixed", but I have not seen any option in CMOS Setup for actually locking an IRQ to a particular PCI card in a particular slot.

Any thoughts/help with this would be appreciated... I am pretty new at this (and have never worked with an HP LH-series server before.)

[Greg Carlson · Accepted solution]

Aaron,

In response to: Locking down IRQs for a particular card????

Boot into Either F2 or F11 (the only difference between F2 and F11 is the option to do a software clear CMOS in F11 that you don't have in F2 on the exit menu.) Still prefer to do a hard clear CMOS on the system board however when possible.

To lock down the PCI IRQ you go into Configuration-> PCI Slot Devices -> PCI IRQ Locking and then lock down the slot where the NIC resides. IRQ 5 is a good one for the NIC.

The Nic drivers are located here: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DriverDownload.jsp?locale=en_US&pnameOID=51736&taskId=135&prodTypeId=329290&prodSeriesId=51734&submit.y=5&submit.x=9〈=en&cc=us

The download page I sent you previously was intended primarly for your BIOS and Netraid FW flashes. I would do the drivecage fw flash also.

Ciao,
Greg

[Aaron Freed]

Not sure which ones are the "Drivecage firmware". Is it this one?--->

HP Netserver lh 4/lh 4r Hot-Swap Backplane Firmware

If not, please let me know--none of the firmwares mention the drive-cage specifically. (Actually, I thought the hotswap backplane was where the PCI cards go.

I did notice something about the drive array on boot-up, which is that it shows garbage after the name "Megaraid" as Linux boots up.

And, yes, Linux does not run on this beast. So, I gave you 10 points for a great answer re: Firmware updates.

I do have one question, (hopefully the last for a while, aside from the above.)

I tried putting in a Matrox Millenium G200 in PCI slot 4 (The NIC is in Slot 3) and the machine does immediately recognize the card and appears to work with it. But the install program for Mandrake (Which I am using now) does not see the Matrox. Instead, it sees the built-in Cirrus video on the motherboard. So, it sends the graphics to that rather than to the Matrox Millenium G200 as it should, so if I try to do anything with XWindow, I get a blank screen. Attempts to reconfigure X with the configuration utility (or even editing the XF86Config-4 script directly have no effect--the machine does not see the Matrox card in graphics mode, though it certainly DOES while in command-line (TEXT) mode!

I can only conclude that the "automatic disable" of the built-in video when a new card is added either does not work at all, or requires me to put the video card in a different slot, e.g. slot 1.

I was afraid to try locking down the interrupt for the video card--I was afraid I would end up with no video at all!

Any thoughts or suggestions (Another easy 10 pointer for ya....)

[Greg Carlson]

Aaron,

Because the server is not designed for add in video cards, there is no way from bios or system switches to disable video. Not that I'm aware of anyhow on the LH4.

hth,
Greg