HP HOWTO

Utilisation and Configuration Guide of HP Products under Linux (Version 0.93)

Bruno Cornec

Hewlett Packard

Bruno@HyPer-Linux.org

Copyright © 1997-2001 by Bruno Cornec

Revision History
Revision 0.8- The 25th of July, 1999 -Revised by: Bruno Cornec
Revision 0.85- The 7th of September, 1999 -Revised by: Bruno Cornec
Revision 0.86- The 27th of September, 1999 -Revised by: Bruno Cornec
Revision 0.87- The 19th of January, 2000 -Revised by: Bruno Cornec
Revision 0.88- The 15th of March, 2000 -Revised by: Bruno Cornec
Revision 0.89- The 8th of July, 2000 -Revised by: Bruno Cornec
Revision 0.90- The 11th of August, 2000 -Revised by: Bruno Cornec
Revision 0.91- The 11th of October, 2000 -Revised by: Bruno Cornec
Revision 0.92- The 27th of December, 2000 -Revised by: Bruno Cornec
Revision 0.93- The 6th of March, 2001 -Revised by: Bruno Cornec

This document describes the use of products available in the Hewlett-Packard (HP) catalog with Linux and some free software. It gives the state of the support for hardware, software to use, answers to some frequently asked questions and gives elements of sizing. The goals are to offer a general view of free software functions and their use at best with HP products; as well as to make new users of HP products rapidly operational and also to allow others to choose their products knowing facts.

License

This HOWTO is a free documentation thanks to Medasys and Hewlett-Packard for whom I do that job; you may copy, redistribute and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 .

or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, Front-Cover Texts or Back-Cover Texts. This document is distributed hoping it will be useful, but without any guaranty; you're completely responsible of its use, and coulnd't complain in case it doesn't work, or even if it breaks the hardware. All the software included in it, if not already copyrighted is released under the GPL.

Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1. Presentation
1.1.1. New versions of this document
1.1.2. Suggestions
1.2. Aknowledgements
2. Presentation of Linux and Free Software
2.1. Some definitions
2.1.1. Free Software or Open Source software
2.1.2. Examples and counter-examples
2.1.3. Linux
2.1.3.1. Linux technical characteristics
2.2. Free software concepts
2.2.1. Free software philosophy
2.2.2. The choice of free software
2.2.2.1. Marketing argumentation
2.2.2.2. Financial argumentation
2.2.2.3. Technical argumentation
2.2.2.4. Solutions argumentation
2.2.2.5. Service argumentation
2.2.3. Wrong ideas on free software
2.2.4. Real problems around free software
2.3. Linux and other operating systems
2.3.1. Linux and other proprietary Unix (HP-UX, Tru64, AIX, Solaris, Irix)
2.3.2. Linux and SCO
2.3.3. Linux and Windows NT
3. Linux and HP products
3.1. Informations on HP products and Linux
3.1.1. General informations
3.1.2. Particular announces 1 - 10064 MB9 GBE800100 - 50064 MB9 GBE800500 - 1000128 MB9 GBE800

4.3. Linux as computing server

Generally, this machine is extremely stressed, mainly on the processor and RAM aspects. Sometimes this is combined with intensive I/O needs. We thus equip such a machine with high-end processors (nowadays Pentium III Xeon) with the greatest level 2 cache possible (nowadays 2 MB). In RAM, we would tend to reach the maximum possible, thus 4 GB. For this type of server, we should adapt the swap such as it covers all the needs in memory required by the computing codes to execute. There is often no specific constraint on network performances, except in case of a computing cluster, in which case we may consider to equip the machines with 100 Mb/s cards with a switch between them, even with Myrinet or Gigabit products. Typically, an LH4 2*PIII 550MHz 1 GB/2*9GB is the target of this type of server. The choice is extremely variable depending on the nature of the computation to do. We should underline that there are processors, such as PA-Risc, much more performant in floating point computation than today Intel processors (up to 6 times).

4.4. Linux as an office server

This kind of server is for the moment rare in the free software world. It's more frequent in Microsoft world, by association with Metaframe solutions of Citrix. An office server needs 50 MB of RAM per user. Intrinsically, this machine has no requirements in term of disk, if it's not at the same time a file server. Processor resources used are important, thus it could be useful to consider the increase in frequency and the addition of processors, because this type of traffic could be quite well done in parallel.

Table 4-8. Sizing of an office server

Simultaneous usersRAM sizeDisk sizeMachine example
1 - 10512 MB9 GBE800
10 - 502 GB9 GBLH4 Bi-processor
50 - 1004 GB18 GBLH6000 Quadri-processor

Chapter 5. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

5.1. "How to have more than 1 GB of RAM on my NetServer ?"
5.2. "How to have more than 128 MB of swap on my NetServer ?"
5.3. "How to use the other procesors of my NetServer ?"
5.4. "Is Linux Y2K compatible ?"

5.1. "How to have more than 1 GB of RAM on my NetServer ?"

The following informations are adapted from the page of Rik van Riel. They concern 2.0.x as well as 2.2.x kernels.

First of all, the IA32 Intel architecture is limited by construction in its memory management to 4 GB. Space which should be divided into virtual memory and physical memory. Which means that if you choose to recognize more RAM, the maximum size for a program decreases.

But Linux can't manage more than 1 GB by default. To go above that, in fact up to 2 GB today, because Linux can't manage more memory for the moment, you need to modify 2 files provided with kernel sources and recompile it. Those 2 sources are /usr/src/linux/include/asm-i386/page.h and /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/vmlinux.lds.

>From 2.0.37 and 2.2.12 kernels on, the patch was integrated in the kernel and may be activated when doing a make config.

The maximum Ram managed in the i386 version was ported to 64 GB after 2.3.23.

5.2. "How to have more than 128 MB of swap on my NetServer ?"

Up to the version 2.8x of the util-linux package, the mkswap command could create swap partitions only up to 128 MB maximum. You then had to create as much partitions as necessary. Till the 2.9 version, included in standard in RedHat 6.0 and following distributions, it's possible to create directly swap partitions up to 2 GB and to 8 partitions.

5.3. "How to use the other procesors of my NetServer ?"

Multi-processing is supported by Linux operationnaly till the 2.0 version of the kernel. For a 2.0.x kernel, you have to recompile it and set up the SMP variable in the Makefile to 1. For a 2.2.x or 2.4.x kernel, you have to set it up during the make config. For more details, please consult the SMP-HOWTO.

5.4. "Is Linux Y2K compatible ?"

Generally, Linux is Y2K compatible. For more informations please consult the FAQ.

Chapter 6. References

I already mentioned the documentation files, installed typically under the directory /usr/src/linux/Documentation. They are a real gold mine of useful informations.

The following FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) are periodically posted in the group news:news.answers and archived on FTP servers like ftp://rtfm.mit.edu :

A lot of other Linux HOWTO contain informations useful in link with our subject :

The following Usenet groups cover subjects linked to HP :

You may also consult the groups mentioned in Section 2.2.2.5.

On Internet, you may consult with a great benefit the following sites :

Table 6-1. Web sites of HP

SubjectURL
HP Linux Portalhttp://www.hp.com/go/linux
HP and Linuxhttp://www.hp-linux.org
HP France Education Linuxhttp://hpwww.ec-lyon.fr/hpeduc/education/offre/linux/educ_linux.html
HP Supporthttp://www.hp.com/pressrel/apr99/20apr99a.htm
HP HOWTOhttp://www.HyPer-Linux.org/HP-Howto/HP-HOWTO-EN/index.html
Linux Pa-Risc (Puffin Group)http://thepuffingroup.com/parisc/software.html
Linux Pa-Risc (ESIEE)http://mkhppa1.esiee.fr/en/
Linux and HP Labshttp://www.hpl.hp.com/research/comp_systems.html#Linux Technology
Linux IA64http://www.linuxia64.org
Linux IA64 (HP Labs)http://dtf.external.hp.com/dtf/swdev/1999/08/feature1_a.html
HP RedHat certificationhttp://bugzilla.redhat.com/certification/cert-report.php3?mod_company=Hewlett+Packard
HP Linuxcare certificationhttp://www.linuxcare.com/labs/certs/C1F5.epl
HP Utigrouphttp://www.hputigroup.com

Table 6-2. Other fundamental sites on Linux and Open Source Software

SubjectURL
Linux Documentation Projecthttp://www.linuxdoc.org
Linux Weekly News - Summary of 1998http://lwn.net/1999/features/1998timeline/
Linux Weekly News - Summary of 1999http://lwn.net/1999/features/Timeline/
IOS Counterhttp://www.leb.net/hzo/ioscount/index.html
Comparaison MS-Windows NT Server 4.0 -- Unixhttp://www.linux-france.com/article/these/unix-vs-nt/unix-vs-nt.html
Netcraft studieshttp://www.netcraft.com/survey/
L'AFUL (Association)http://www.aful.org
APRIL (Association)http://www.april.org
Linux Centerhttp://www.linux-center.org
Linux Francehttp://www.linux-france.com/
Linux Journalhttp://www.linuxjournal.com
Linux Gazettehttp://www.linuxgazette.com/
Linux Magazine Francehttp://www.linuxmag-france.com/
Linux Starthttp://linuxstart.com/index.html
Da Linux French Pagehttp://linuxfr.org/news/
RedHat Hardware supporthttp://www.redhat.com/cgi-bin/support
Source Exchangehttp://www.sourcexchange.com/
Mobilix : Linux Mobilehttp://mobilix.org/
Developers Servers http://www.linuxmama.com/dev-server.html
Medasys Linuxhttp://www.medasys-digital-systems.fr/linux

Chapter 7. Contributors

I would like to thank especially all the people who contributed in any way to improve this HOWTO :

Chapter 8. Future versions

This chapter gives indications on elements which should be taken in account in future versions of this document. It should be taken more as a reminder for the author, than as an engagement of what he will really do !

Version 0.94

Images path.

Better management of the size of tables (PS).

Place of the footer (PS).

One line paragraph management.

Management of the size of papers, margins and images (PS).

Paragraph on TX/e-vectra management

Rework the printer paragraph

Version 0.95

URLs verification in function of the language. Use of official addresses and paragraph on mirrors.

Rework the cluster part

Paragraph on APM for portables

Linux as a backup server (Arkeia)

Remote Assistant - Remote Control. Management

Put the Argumementations in the TOC (HTML).

Avoid titles in end of page (PS).

Paragraph on network products

Version 0.96

Detail limitations of evolution from Unix to Linux

Rework the example of the vaccine :-)

Management of the date with wml

Rework chapter 1 (put there history and new versions)

Glossary/Abbreviations