Compaq Proliant 5000 server install Help

[ezeze5000]

I have a Compaq Proliant 5000 server at home that I received from work collecting dust and I want to put it to good use.

I have Compaq Smart-2/P Array Controller (v1.94) for the hard drives and an onboard SCSI controller for the CDROM.


The machine is a dual pentium pro 200 with 512k cache each chip and has 512MB of ram.

I popped the CD in and the syetem surprisingly booted fine without a problem. At the boot: prompt I hit enter which brought me to a nice screen that said that I didn't have enough memory. Clearly this was a mistake.

I even tried "linux expert mem=exactmap mem=640@0k mem=511@1m"
and
linux mem=exactmap mem=640k@0k mem=15m@1m mem=48m@16m
(or something to that effect - I can't remember the exact params however you get the right idea) but that simply locked the machine after it says "Uncompressing Linux....OK"

Anybody have any ideas on this subject?

[Dr Caleb]

I had a very similar problem with Red Hat 7,8 with a Proliant 2500, dual PPro 200, similar specifications. Same error.

I put in a problem with Red Hat , they seemed to think it was due to the Smart Array controller. In the end, they told me they don't support intallation on RAID devices. I tried similar command line overrides, including installing in text mode.

Compaq had a newer version of the Smart2 Array controller you could load as an OEM driver that I got from Source Forge, but it didn't solve the problem.

In the end, I abandoned installing Red Hat on the system and just went with Win2k which installed fine.

[ezeze5000]

Well I finally got a Linux distro to install.

White Box Enterprise Linux 3.0

I had to pass this command to get it to load.

"linux mem=exactmap mem=640k@0 mem=511m@1m"

The install is about half through, I'll let you know how it went.

I tried the same line in Fedora 2..... but with no success.

[Yacuzaboss]

Dont fret this problem drove me crazy.

For some reason the Compaq Proliant 5000 Server breaks the memory into not two but three parts. (you can break it down into two parts using "exactmap" or "linux mem" but i noticed it runs weird.)

You say you have 512 mb of ram? No problem.

Enter this command at the setup prompt.

"linux mem=exactmap mem=640k@0k mem=15m@1m mem=496m@16m"

If you upgrade to 1024 mb of ram you will have to change command line to:

"linux mem=exactmap mem=640k@0k mem=15m@1m mem=1012m@16m"

It's a really weird breakup but it works.
If you get Fedora to work drop me a line. I had X problems and got frustrated.

Hope this helps.
Yacuzaboss

[ezeze5000]

Make sure you have the raid array set up with "smartstart" first.

Here is the SCSI driver that you need to make the raid array work.

NCR53c8xx

Just do a Google search to find it....I did!

[Nunners]

I have a Compaq 2500 with 256Mb of memory, and can't install FC1 or FC2. Did anyone ever find the fix with the memory problem - I've tried various things, including the linux mem=exactmap ... line, but that didn't work.

Many thanks
Nunners

[ezeze5000]

Compaq 2500

You need to make sure all your hardware is configured properly first.

There are software programs you can download to do this.

Do a Google search.