Why does PSP break my systems?

[Mike Lancaster]

We have discovered that once you install PSP you are forever stuck with the same kernel version at the time you installed it.

No matter what you do, even if you uninstall the psp components before you install the new kernel, it will crash.

Here is how to break a system using PSP every time.

1) install OS (say redhat 5.0/5.1)
2) install desired HP PSP components
we use on: hpasm hpacucli hprsm hponcfg hprsm to try and keep it to a minimum
3) Reboot and run that way for a while.

4) Update your kernel with say an errata kernel like Redhat released today for that big exploit hole in RHEL5.x and reboot.
5) BANG...crash due to unable to find any volume groups /root disk.


Same thing happens even if you uninstall all the psp components before you attempt #4.


PSP must do something that breaks the systems permanently even if you uninstall.

I have tried, cleaning the modprobe.conf, and rebuilding the initrd, and other stuff all were no help.

I seems that Once you install psp on your system your stuck forever and will never be able to update your kernel.

If someone has any ideas I would love to hear them.

[Mike Lancaster]

This was caused by some options being left in the /etc/modprobe.conf file which work for the HP version of the qlogic driver that are not supported by the default qlogic driver.

When the new kernel rpm was installed, it was copying those options into the initrd and the module was failing to load and causing other boot failures.

FYI, I found this by expanding the initrd that was generated automatically by redhats rpm during install of the kernel, and adding my own "sleep 20" commands throughout the init script in the initrd image.

[dirk dierickx]

we don't use PSP, never seen the need. Everything works just fine with the modules included with RH!

i don't like vendors introducing modules into the kernel, they are always laging behind kernel updates, introduce instability etc.

PSP contains some monitoring stuff as well if i'm not mistaken, well, that just works without using the HP modules.