Using HP ProLiant Systems With Debian

1.1. Copyright and License

This document, Using HP's integrated Lights Out (iLO) with Debian, is copyrighted (c) 2004-2005 by Matt Taggart <taggart@debian.org>.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. Debian is a registered trademark of Software in the Public Interest.

1.2. Feedback

Feedback is on this document is appreciated. Please send any additions, comments and criticisms to Matt Taggart <taggart@debian.org>.

2.1. General Install Notes

Before installing any version of Debian there are some things you need to consider and setup.

2.2. Installing woody

Installing woody on older ProLiants is fairly straight forward, but systems such as the dl360g3/dl380g3 and newer have a newer SmartArray controller that was not supported by the install kernel in woody (2.4.18). In addition that kernel lacks the tg3 driver needed for their lan devices, which can be worked around using removable media, but is generally difficult. To overcome these problems several people have produced custom boot-floppies with the correct set of drivers to make installing on these systems easier.

• ProLiant specific, with installation and creation instructions: http://people.debian.org/~taggart/boot-floppies/

• Dell specific but more up to date and may work depending on your system: http://wiki.osuosl.org/display/LNX/Debian+on+Dell+Servers

As mentioned in the general section, if using the iLO text console to install you need tell the installer not to use framebuffer mode. The above boot-floppies are built with framebuffer mode turned off, but if you are using generic woody boot-floppies or another variant you may have to turn off the framebuffer mode. On initial boot the syslinux boot loader presents a screen that lists several function keys you can press for help and additional boot options. On one of those pages there are instructions on how boot with the framebuffer disabled by appending "video=vga16:off" to your boot selection. You will need to remember to make sure that the bootloader installed also either had this option or that you run a kernel with framebuffer disabled.

After the initial install, you will most likely want to upgrade the kernel to a more recent kernel, backported to woody. http://backports.org maintains some backports but doesn't always have the latest since there is not much demand. Once sarge releases I suspect they might stop backporting for woody unless there are people willing to contribute.

If you are interested in using grub and are using a SmartArray controller, be aware that there was a problem with the version of grub in woody that requires a work-around. After installing grub (and before rebooting), add "(hd0) /dev/cciss/c0d0" to /boot/grub/device-map and rerun grub-installer.

2.3. Installing sarge

sarge and newer use the new Debian-Installer http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/. FIXME: explain using d-i including pxe booting

As mentioned in the general section, if using the iLO text console to install you need tell the installer not to use framebuffer mode. The isolinux bootloader used by the new debian-installer uses a framebuffer spashscreen to print a fancy Debian graphic and the words "Press F1 to continue". This causes the system to go into graphics mode, and then you can't see anything on the iLO text console. Fortunately you can still type and you can blindly hit F1 and d-i proceeds to the next screen which it back in text mode. Next when you boot you need to disable the framebuffer (how to do so is explained on one of the help screens) by appending "debian-installer/framebuffer=false" to your boot selection. You will want the bootloader installed on the system to have this option as well, and fortunately d-i take care of this for you automatically.

3.1. Firmware/BIOS upgrades

The firmware images are usually in something HP calls an 'scexe' file, which is a binary blob wrapped by a posix shell script. When invoked, this 'scexe' unpacks the binary blob of files and then runs a binary from the blob, usually an installer. This binary often does things like try to determine what distro and version it's running on. In some cases you can get this to work on Debian, but in general this usually breaks horribly. If it does work the 'scexe' scripts also support an '--unpack=' flag, which allows you to do the unpack step without invoking the installer as well. In some cases the stuff unpacked gives you what you need to upgrade. More details in the firmware section below.

3.2. Drivers

While HP makes a point of providing drivers on the support page, these are always custom built for the non-Debian distro in question. Fortunately, HP is good about making sure that the HP specific driver work that they do is also sent upstream to kernel.org. So use a Debian or upstream kernel and you'll be fine.

3.3. Software

Since you're running Debian, a lot of the software listed probably won't be of interest to you. It's all propriatary and most of it is specific to particular product support options or supported distros, and so doesn't make sense for Debian. However, there are a few tools that can be made to work in Debian if you have a need for them, mainly the management tools.

HP provides various utilities to help in managing the server, for example health monitoring, array config/monitoring, etc. These are almost always distributed as RPM packages. You can use alien(1) to convert them, but they usually have RPM install scripts that do various things on install (mostly check what distro you're on and setup config files). While sometimes you can use 'alien -c' to convert these scripts, often the scripts will have Red Hat or SuSE'isms in them, and will fail on install. To work around this you can either not convert the script(no '-c') and then manually do the needed steps that the scripts would have done, or you can use 'alien -g -c' to create an intermediate debian source package where you can go in and clean up the install scripts. Some of these methods will be documented in later section of this document.

3.4. Update Alerts

HP provides a service for notifiying system owners when new versions of items are available. You can go to https://h30046.www3.hp.com/subprofile.php?SUBS=DRIVERSIGNUP and register for the service, it's free. They do require you to fill out a form but it doesn't require much personal info other than your name and email address.

4.1. Firmware Upgrade Methods

HP provides several upgrade mechanisms, some upgrades are available via all methods, others only a subset. Most of the methods are Microsoft Windows centric and even the Linux utility uses a custom update script. The rumor is that the reason for this is that HP requires a way to prompt for the user to accept an EULA.

The mechanisms are,

Of the above methods, the "Online ROM Flash Component for Linux" is the easiest and most accessible. In some cases, it's not possible to use that mechanism and an alternative way is available. This guide strives to recommend the easiest method possible while minimizing the use of propriatary software to do so.

4.2. ProLiant System firmware

HP provides an update tool for the system bios and several of the onboard chips all rolled in one. The update is platform dependent, one per unique system. For example: my dl360g3 system is also known as P31, different models and different generations of the same model will have different platform names.

Unfortunately HP's web pages are designed in such a way that there is no wayt to link to the latest version for a particular platform. Instead, traverse HP's support pages, as described above, until you find the 'Online ROM Flash Component for Linux' for your platform, a 'scexe' file. As described above this file is a shell script wrapper around a binary blob, which contains the update tool and firmware. On the systems I've tried (dl360g3) this utility runs fine under Debian. If you just use the --unpack option and look at what it provides, the update tool is a statically linked binary and it appears to just use general kernel methods to talk to the hardware, so I expect it will run fine on any Linux distribution. For example, on my system to update I did:

• Downloaded the update file, 'CP005348.scexe'.

• At a normal user prompt, ran '$ chmod +x CP005348.scexe'.

• As root on the system to update, ran '# ./CP005348.scexe'.

• Followed the instructions, waited to ensure it was finished, and then rebooted.

As with any firmware update, be very careful, mistakes can make your fancy expensive hardware into a dead piece of junk.

4.3. ProLiant iLO firmware

The iLO firmware is also made available through these same mechanisms, and you want the 'Online ROM Flash Component for Linux'. However if you attempt to run it you get 'ERROR: The HP Management drivers and agents are not installed.'. While it may be possible to get those installed (covered later in this document) there is an easier way. If you run the scexe with '--unpack=.' it will just unpack (in the current directory due to the '.') and one of the files it unpacks is the firmware image, named something like 'ilo182.bin'. You can use the ilo web interface and this file to upgrade the iLO firmware. For example in my case:

• Downloaded the update file, 'CP005863.scexe'.

• At a normal user prompt on my local system, ran '$ chmod +x CP005863.scexe'.

• Ran it with the unpack flag '# ./CP005863.scexe --unpack=.'.

• Pointed my web broswer at the iLO (see the iLO section of this document for info on using the iLO). Went to the Administration -> Upgrade iLO Firmware section. Clicked on the 'browse' button and selected the 'ilo182.bin' file. Then clicked 'Send firmware image' and waited to ensure the entire file was uploaded, then the browser redirected me to the iLO login page.

As noted in the firmware revision history, if you are upgrading from a version older than 1.60 (the first version where ssh was available) there is a one time delay while ssh keys are generated. So you may have to wait a while before you can access the ssh console.

5.1. iLO Setup Walk-Thru

5.1.1. System Information

If your system is brand new it comes with a removable system information tag (attached via elastic or glue) that lists information such as:

        Serial No: EAGZLDN42B
        User Name: Administrator
        DNS Name: ILOEAGZLDN42B
        Password: KVJJRUF4
      

login and password are case sensitive

If you don't have the iLO system information, see the troubleshooting selection below.

---

5.1.2. Plug-in Power and a Network Cable Into the iLO

Once powered, the iLO sends out a dhcp request that includes the "DNS Name" from the system information tag in the request. Check your dhcp server log (/var/log/syslog on Debian) for the IP address your server issued. An example iLO request looks like:

      dhcpd: DHCPDISCOVER from 00:0e:7f:b2:c1:2e via eth2
      dhcpd: DHCPOFFER on 10.100.100.25 to 00:0e:7f:b2:c1:2e (ILOEAGZLDN42B) via eth2
      dhcpd: DHCPREQUEST for 10.100.100.25 (10.0.0.1) from 00:0e:7f:b2:c1:2e (ILOEAGZLDN42B) via eth2
      dhcpd: DHCPACK on 10.100.100.25 to 00:0e:7f:b2:c1:2e (ILOEAGZLDN42B) via eth2
      

Point your web browser at that IP address (10.100.100.25 in the above example) and record the MAC address for later use.

If using a non-Netscape/non-MSIE browser you may see a message that says HTTP 1.1 is not supported. Explicitly enter "https://" for the URL to work around this bug. (See the note in the Troubleshooting section)

          Ctrl-T -> Ctrl-Alt-Del
          Ctrl-U -> F8
          Ctrl-V -> F10
          Ctrl-W -> F3
          Ctrl-X -> NONE  (we might need it for nano later)
          Ctrl-Y -> F12
        

5.2. Troubleshooting

• If you don't know the IP address of the iLO

  • If the iLO is configured to use DHCP: you can force the iLO to do a DHCP request by either unplugging and replugging the it's LAN cable, or by removing all power from the server and reconnecting. While doing one of these, watch your DHCP server logs or run a program such as arpwatch to see the DHCP request and determine the IP (and MAC address if needed).

  • If the iLO is not using DHCP: use the RBSU from the console to change the network and user settings.

• If you don't know the login/passwd for the web interface: use the RBSU to create a new login/passwd. If you also configured the RBSU itself to prompt for a login, then you will need to use a switch on the mainboard that disables the RBSU login so you can edit accounts. This process is documented in your server's system manual and possibly on the instructions on the inside of the case lid. See the HP website for manuals.

• When accessing the iLO web interface you may get an error that your browser "does not support http 1.1". You can work around this by explictly specifying the secure interface by using "https://" with the URL. (The "http://" just redirects to the https:// address anyway, so you're just skipping this step)

• When accessing the iLO with a browser if you may get a message about "incorrect Message Authentication Code". This is a bug that can show up in a couple different situations,

  • When accessing the iLO with a browser and changing its IP address, and then trying to access it at the new address using the same browser

  • Sometimes removing and reconnecting power, and then trying to access the iLO at the same address

  It is not known if this is an iLO bug or a broswer bug. If you encounter this, you can work around the problem by either restarting your browser or using a different browser (or different instance of the same browser). Hopefully this will be fixed in newer firmware.

6.1. Health monitoring

FIXME: fans, temperature, etc.

6.2. SmartArray monitoring

FIXME: hp tools, cpqarrayd, array-utils, etc.