We have inherited a Compaq Proliant DL380 server.  I'll not go into all
it's specs at the moment but suffice to say that it appears to work.

It had Windows NT 4.0 on it.  When first powered up, the fans were full
blast and loud.  By the time the login screen was displayed, the fans had
down shifted to a much quiter level.  Fine.

I installed OpenSUSE 10.1 from CDs, formating the hard drives in the
process.  Not that I am married to OpenSUSE for this server, it was just
handy and recent.  It went relatively well with the fans screaming at full
speed the entire time.  Now, SUSE boots to a text login and appears to be
working fine but the fans don't downshift.

I found that it needs a health monitor driver from HP which several Google
search hits indicate are closed source (Ugh!).  To add insult, the driver
download page for the system,
http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/family/model/1122.html?lang=en&cc=us&prodSeriesId=254889
lists support for "Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1" or "UnitedLinux 1.0/SUSE
Linux Enterprise Server 8" as the newest version distros.

So finally we reach my questions for you enterpise admin types:
1. Is there any other source for the "hpasm" health program for a more
modern distro or kernel?
2. Is there a different program somewhere that can provide this same
functionality on a recent Linux?
3. If the answer is negative to the above, must one then run the older
supported distro on the hardware?
3a. If so, how is such a distro made secure and fully maintained (patches,
fixes, etc.)?
3b. If so, is it a given that this system should not be used as an
Internet facing server?

I have other small issues with the server but the fan speed noise control,
along with the associated questions above, could make or break it's
current intended use.

Alan


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