Support Notes for Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES v.4.5 for HP Integrity Servers

Known Issues
1. HP does not recommend using the drivers in the RHEL4.5 installation for the A6826A,
A7538A, AB379A, AB379B, AD167A, AD168A, AD300A, AE311A, A8002A, or A8003A cards.
To obtain the drivers that HP supports for these cards:
a. From the following Web site, click on the "Driver Downloads" link:
http://www.hp.com
b. Click the radio button preceding "Download drivers and software" on the Software &
Driver Downloads page, enter the card number in the text box.
c. Click "Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (Itanium)" under the "select operating system" heading
on the specify operating system page.
d. Scroll down the download drivers and software page for your specified card, and click
the download button for the required driver.
2. HP recommends backing up all data and doing a cold install of Red Hat Enterprise Linux
ES v. 4 if upgrading from ES v. 3 or v. 2.1.
3. If the Red Hat kernel detects a VGA card, it defaults to a VGA display. To use serial console,
use the EFI Boot Manager to select the serial device as the primary (or only) console device.
4. The installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES v. 4 may fail if using the autopartition
function on a server with multiple disks. If you encounter this problem, remove all disks
from the server except those on which you are installing Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES v. 4.
Replace the removed disks when operating system installation on the targeted disks is
complete. You may then need to edit the device file name of the /boot/efi mount point
in the /etc/fstab file because the device file may have changed when the disks were
replaced.
5. If you have Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES v. 3 installed on a disk partition on your server
and want to install Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES v. 4 on another, you must change the name
of your boot manager entry on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES v. 3 partition because v. 3
and v.4 use the same name for the boot manager entry.
There is no rename function, so from the Boot Option Maintenance Menu in the EFI Boot
Manager, add another boot entry with the same boot parameters as the existing Red Hat
Enterprise Linux ES v. 3 entry, but give it a different name.
6. If you are transitioning to Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES v 4, note that the load order of storage
and networking drivers in this software release is the reverse of the order in Red Hat
Enterprise Linux ES v. 3 and v. 2.1. The numbers on the device file names for your NICs
will appear in the opposite order to which you have become accustomed to seeing them.
7. If using an HP Procurve 4108gl switch with a heavily loaded system, you may experience
intermittent data truncation with FTP transfers through the network. To avoid this problem:
a. Connect to the HP Procurve 4108gl switch using telnet or serial console and login.
b. From the switch command line interface, enter config.
c. Enter no int all lacp.
8. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES v. 4 kernel supports maximum memory of 16 GB, which
is also supported by HP.
9. No support for uncertified .rpm packages.
If you add uncertified .rpm packages to the operating system, the operating system will
not be supported by Red Hat. Red Hat supports only .rpm packages bundled in supported
Linux distributions for Integrity servers and official Red Hat Updates for those distributions.
HP supports the Linux software it distributes.
10. Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES v. 4 does not ship or install a kernel-source rpm with the binary
installation CDs or DVDs. If you want to modify or view the kernel configuration, you must
8 Support Notes for Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES v.4.5