BSD on HP Proliant machines (was: RE: [nycbug-talk] BSD Success Stories (fwd))

[Sunny Dubey]

On Monday 25 October 2004 18:28, Brown, James (Jim) wrote:

> HP is the same way.
>
> These are a very strong platform for BSD and they *can* be made to:
> 1. work well; and 2. be supported by IBM/HP.
>
> If this could be done- I think more interest and committment would
> roll our way.

(yes, this was top posted)

At one of my offices, they purchased an HP Proliant server.

While getting Linux on it.  I was highly annoyed at the speed in which the 
fans were spinning.  In order to turn down the speed of the fans I had to 
install binary only software called HPASM.

Apparently HPASM is software that runs on all HP Proliant machines, and does 
basic server management stuff.  (Like turning down the bloody fans.)  It does 
some other cool stuff like kernel crashing detection.

This software is released in RPM only format for RHEL and SuSE-Ent.  Having it 
ported to both debian and mandrake was largely trivial for me, but it may 
annoy and scare other non-RPM junkies away from trying to extract and 
install.  It might even force lots of people to stick to RHEL and SuSE-Ent.

(The HPASM software also sucks because of its dependencies on older releases 
of the GNU GlibC/C++ libraries).

There is no port of this software to BSD.  None at all.

Which means that if you wanted the cool features this software provides (and 
some sanity for your ear drums), HP servers are not the way to go for BSD 
machines.

It might be possible to run HPASM under the linux binary emulation system.  
(recent versions of the HPASM software are done entirely in usermode, and 
binary only kernel modules are not needed anymore.)  However this would be a 
crappy solution.

Sunny Dubey