GNULinuxCompaqProliantIML

This is only a crappy note… and not a real HOWTO

Introduction

Compaq/HP Proliant server has a kind of integrated managed with a bunch of proprietary interfaces. There are HP/Compaq specific tools for GNU/Linux to do the management (IML) but required specific kernel version or specific version of the GNU/Linux distribution. So installing it on non-supported version is a real pain. So other main issue is that source code is not available (the software seems proprietary as I can't find any complete licensing information) for these tools and used various non-standard libraries. I won't talk about the SNMP integration or the various self-hosted http server ;-)

But you still need the information coming from the bios, mainboard or the RAID…

Here is some information on how I installed (installed is a big word for these notes)

Software required

• A recent Linux kernel and distribution (tested on 2.6 series with Fedora Core 2, 3 and 4)
• ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/products/servers/supportsoftware/linux/
  • Dowload - hpasm-7.3.0b-63.rhel4.i386.rpm - hpdiags-7.0.1-8.linux.i386.rpm

How to install

Please do not install the RPMs except if you want to play…

• Use 'rpm2cpio' to convert the RPMS in the cpio format
• Make a dedicated directory for the HP proprietary stuff (like /var/hp)
• Extract the two cpio files in the directory with the following command :
  • cpio --extract --preserve-modification-time --make-directories <hpasm.cpio
  • cpio --extract --preserve-modification-time --make-directories <hpdiags.cpio
• Make a custom directory in /var/hp/lib/ where you make a copy of all the libraries found in /var/hp. (a little 'find' with a 'file' will help you or ldd on hpasmd and the binaries in the utils direcotyr)
• The only 'required' interface to IML is created by the 'hpasmd' daemon. It's the only application required to be started to be able to use the utils (hplog and alike).
• Make a custom ld.so.conf or LD_PRELOAD for the /var/hp/lib directory.
• Try to start manually the hpasmd daemon, if it works is that all the libraries are available. (check with ldd if don't have any missing libraries)
• If the hpasmd is running, you should be able to use the various utils provided in hpasm.

What kind of information can I get from the HP proprietary tools ?

hpasmcli> show temp
Sensor   Location              Temp       Threshold
------   --------              ----       ---------
#0        SYSTEM_BD             -          -
#1        PROCESSOR_ZONE       27C/80F    56C/132F
#2        CPU#1                30C/86F    67C/152F
#3        I/O_ZONE             27C/80F    57C/134F
#4        CPU#2                 -          -

hpasmcli> show fans
Fan  Location        Present Speed  of max  Redundant  Partner
Hot-pluggable
---  --------        ------- -----  ------  ---------  -------
-------------
#1   PROCESSOR_ZONE  Yes     NORMAL 10%     No         N/A      No
#2   SYSTEM          Yes     NORMAL 10%     No         N/A      No

hpasmcli> show server
System        : ProLiant DL360 G3
Serial No.    : XXXXXXXXXXXX
ROM version   : P31 01/28/2004
iLo present   : Yes
Embedded NICs : 2
        NIC1 MAC: 00:0f:20:79:XX:XX
        NIC2 MAC: 00:0f:20:79:XX:XX

Processor: 0
        Name         : Intel Xeon
        Stepping     : 9
        Speed        : 2800 MHz
        Bus          : 533 MHz
        Socket       : 1
        Level2 Cache : 512 KBytes
        Status       : Ok

Processor total  : 1

Memory installed : 1024 MBytes
ECC supported    : Yes

You can also use the 'hplog -v' to get the latest log from the BIOS.

Update 23 May 2007

• cciss_vol_status is a lightweight free software to monitor the status of the RAID devices from the cciss driver. Very handy to make alert scripts when one of the disk is dead in the array. http://freshmeat.net/projects/ccissvolstatus/ You just need to the recent cciss free driver works on GNU/Linux but also on FreeBSD?.