ubuntu on ml370 g6?

[Robert Deming]

Has anyone successfully installed ubuntu on an ml370 g6? This web page http://www.ubuntu.com/partners/hp indicates that ubuntu has been certified on the ml370, but the lack of a g6 suffix makes me suspicious, particularly given the problems that I'm having with the integrated network ports.

From elsewhere I've read that the ml370 g6 has a quadport nc375i LAN device. Looking at the HP support/drivers page, both suse and redhat provide an RPM for this driver, but the ubuntu ml370 g6 ubuntu page is lacking.

I *have* seen a posting saying the ubuntu server 9.04 includes the nc375i driver, but when I examine the ISO, I do not see the nx_nic present.

So, I'd just like confirmation that someone else has successfully installed ubuntu 9.04 server on this hardware. Am I going to trip over more problems than the need for the nx_nic driver?

thanks,
robert

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

I have not installed ubuntu on this hardware. It seems baed on your information there may be problems with the NIC driver and the disk driver for the G6.

You may wish to boot off a live cd version and see what messages you detect and what hardware is found.

That should give you a good indication of what is going to happen in a full install.

Ubuntu is pretty good with new hardware and I find them to be faster than other distributions at hardware support.

SEP

[Bryan Gartner]

Looks like you are correct regarding that ML370G6/NIC combination needing the driver you listed. FWIW, I've not tried this combination with Juanty either.

And just like you, I can't find that driver in any of the standard Jaunty install images. So you may have a couple of (and likely more) options (depending on how hard you want to work):

1) As this was later included for Karmic (see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/jaunty/+source/linux/+bug/389603) you may want to try a snapshot or daily build of the Karmic ISO,
or even the Jaunty-proposed installer via https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed

2) Using the Jaunty server install ISO, it may be possible to include the driver during install time via the firmware/USB key approach.

[Daniel Frazier]

Bryan is correct, this driver is missing from the installer - but it is part of the distribution kernel post-install. This is a known issue, with a workaround suggestion in the support notes.

The support notes can be found on the following page (Part #3):

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=3884083&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=3884082&swLang=13&taskId=135&swEnvOID=4032

[Robert Deming]

My problem was exacerbated by not having a dvd-rom drive. (The specs for the server said that all models ship with a dvd-rom drive, so in the configurator I deselected the dvd-rom drive.) Initially I thought that I could live without the dvd-rom drive, as the server supports netboot, and I had a usb drive, but neither of those worked for me. So, rather than be niggardly (look it up; it isn't related to the word that you think it is); I went ahead and bought a dvd writer to use with this cadillac system.

Ubuntu installed and booted up without any problems. However, about a minute after the network interface is enabled, the network interface fails, and the rest of the network becomes unusable by my other hosts. This is probably an OS or configuraton issue. (I'll confirm that by installing an evaluation copy of windows 2008.)

Anyway, thanks for the solution.

[Robert Deming]

For whatever it is worth, I put a d-link gigE crd in the computer, disabled the nc375i quadport card in bios, and now the ethernet, using the d-link card, works with my ubuntu 9.04 amd64 server environment.

I'll now try upgrading the kernel, and will reply with those results (for the nc375i), and will then close the thread.

robert

[Robert Deming]

kernel upgraded to 2.6.31.1. netxen module available. When enabling eth0 for the netxen module, network fails.

bummer, I could have used four network ports. :(

robert

[Robert Deming]

HP provides commercial network drivers for SUSE and RH in the driver download section for those OSes for the ML370 G6. While parts of those drivers can only be used with a license, the nx_nic.ko driver does not have this requirement.

If you install 'alien' on your ubuntu server, and download one of these SUSE or RH drivers onto your machine, you can extract, build and install the nx_nic.ko module.

The nx_nic.ko module is more stable than the netxen_nic.ko driver that comes with ubuntu. The latter usually choked within one minute for me, and if left connected to the network, would usually bring the network down. In contrast, nx_nic.ko has been working fine for me for the last two hours, during which I beat on it some with iperf.

[Robert Deming]

download, build, and install the nx_nic.ko module.

[wobbe]

How about using the HP software, like the system management homepage, with ubuntu. Does that work?
If that's not supported I wouldn't use ubuntu but use RHEL. And I want to go cheap use Cent O.S. That also works file. You could even try linux from Oracle might also work.