Linux won't install on Proliant

[John Chelen]

Can't get SuSE Linux 7.2 or 8.1 to install on a Compaq Proliant 5000 - quad processor, 1 smart controller, 3 array controllers, 640M of RAM. The Smart controller supports CD and Tape, the 1st controller supports the boot disk.
I try to boot from floppy and add the device modules but recieve an error message asking me to increase swap space. I've tried to increase the size of the Ram disk by passing additional parameters with no sucess. Ideas, please?

[John Chelen]

We've moved away from this approach but still face problems. We're booting 8.1 from CD and the boot option menu appears. Based on other forum messages, we've verified that SuSE is only detects 16M of RAM. We've tried to enter mem=128M (in varying amounts up to our installed 640M) as well as AICP=off, apic=on, etc. with no luck. Anytime we use the mem=000 argument the system panics. At best, when we don't use mem, we get to a statement that the ramdisk is being loaded and the system appears to be dormant (no lights on the CD, etc.) If we ctrl-alt-del we get a message saying stopping md. Does anyone know how we can get past this memory problem or what other approach we should take?

[Balaji N]

can u try the options specified out here to see if this helps.

http://www.ibiblio.org/mdw/HOWTO/BootPrompt-HOWTO-3.html

a blind shot.
-balaji

[John Chelen]

Thanks for the lead, but we've made progress in another direction. We gave up on suse and went to redhat, although we faced the same problems. We used the argument "linux mem=512M@16M dd expert" at boot and it worked. Other advice to declare memory at 0K and 640K and above failed. We thought that since Compaq was reporting only 16M to Linux that we should begin above that level. Our guess is that a similar mem argument for suse might work as well, but since redhat is running we'll likely stick with it.

[Steven E. Protter]

For some reason I've had very similar results on Proliant 3000 boxes. Suse and Mandrake won't load, but Red Hat 9 will.

Perhaps they did a better job testing their release on HP's server line.

SEP