DL380 G5 install of PSP 8.25 on Centos 5.5 causes ASR

[ustincorporated]

We are attempting to install PSP 8.25 on a fresh installation of Centos 5.5 x64 on a DL380 G5.

The server has one dual-core processor installed. Having problems with repeated ASR and errors involving HP-Health and OpenIPMI but unable to determine a method to fix.

PSP obtained from below link...it's specific to Centos 5.? but maybe better off installing newer PSP for Red Hat?:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=15351&prodSeriesId=1121516&prodNameId=3288134&swEnvOID=4074&swLang=8&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=MTX-b0c5f582d85444048079a2cd0a

We followed PSP install instructions from:

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/ProLiant-Servers-ML-DL-SL/HOWTO-Guide-Instructions-Install-HP-PSP-On-CentOS-5/m-p/4652208#M103665

Everything went ok except that when installing hp-OpenhIPMI, we got the following message:

“This kernel requires a rebuild. Seeking source files basic source files appear to be installed. Investigating further.
Unknown Linux Distribution - will attempt to build The hp-OpenIPMI(4) and hpasm(4) man pages have additional information to resolve this issue. The HP Advanced System Management software is currently disabled on this system.”

Later in the process when we launch hp-health with command:

/etc/init.d/hp-health start

The server starts to shut down for a reboot, and then on each boot up when it gets to hp-health, it just reboots the server. Prior to the shutdown process of each reboot we see the loading hp-OpenIPMI driver message.

Any ideas would be much appreciated!

[Bryan Gartner]

Unfortunately, that version of the PSP (8.25) is not targeted for CentOS 5.5 (nor has the appropriate PSP version yet been published).

That said, hp-OpenIPMI should actually not be needed on CentOS 5.5, as the required features have all been backported to that distro version.

[ustincorporated]

Hello Bryan,

Thank you for the response.

If 8.25 is not compatible with 5.5, why does HP have it in the downloads folder?

http://downloads.linux.hp.com/SDR/psp/centos/5.5/x86_64/8.25/

Misinformation can be costly. After a few days of trial and error, we determined PSP 8.25 will work with CentOS 5.5 x64 but HP's Open-IPMI should be uninstalled in favor of the standard IPMI in the distro as you indicated. Getting PSP 8.25 to function properly is a big undertaking requiring many undocumented manual changes, work-arounds, etc.

There are a multitude of other problems we encountered during the installation as well.

With all our Windows servers we use SmartStart or can install such utilities as ACU, ADU, etc. later. Although SmartStart shows up in the download directory for various flavors of Linux, attempting to use the SmartStart reveals no such OS choices. Apparently HP is simply copying a lot of utilities to OS folders where they don't belong with no QA -- or there is a big misunderstanding on our part. From what I was told the whole point of PSP is to do a lot of QA on many applications/utilities/drivers/firmware together to ensure compatibility. Even the "Release Notes" for PSP 8.25 fail to mention what revisions of 5.X it's for -- is it for 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, or 5.5...OR all of them?

At a later date, I'll post a list of errors and manual fixes we made to finally get PSP 8.25 to work under Centos 5.5 x64. CentOS itself also doesn't install well on a DL380 G5, we figured out the details for that as well.

Thanks Again.

[Bryan Gartner]

You are correct, in that there are errant links (like those > 5.3, and which I've now taken care of, so thanks for that feedback).

Regarding hp-OpenIPMI, sadly the version that was published was the last one that did not check versions of the distribution, and subsequent ones would have warned that they were not needed, since the in-distro ones had all the correct features. I am truly sorry that you tripped over this due to the combination of errors.

I'm not sure I follow your SmartStart comments regarding "shows up in the download directory". The only things in the "psp" folder pertains to the ProLiantSupportPack, and for CentOS, only the the individual components that were tested are there.

You have hit upon one issue regarding our "Release Notes" and citing (or lack thereof what point releases of the distro are supported). We have been working to clarify this internally and hope to properly reference that with future published deliverables, like the PSP. In general, it should be reasonable to assume that a given PSP version works with the associated distro release and previous ones, although there are certainly exceptions to that, which are to be included in the packaging.

Again, apologies for the errant links (and the implied version being enabled). I look forward to the details you post regarding your efforts.