Woody on Proliant ML350 G3 (smartarray 641)

[Emmanuel Halbwachs <Emmanuel.Halbwachs@lpn.cnrs.fr>]

Hello everybody,

I've just suscribed to the list after discovering it recently. I'm
not strictly an ISP, but I provide various services for 150-200 users.

I would like to run woody on HP Compaq Proliant ML350 G3 (no choice of
the model because of public market reasons). Before buying some
machines, I would like to check if woody can be installed
on. Actually, colleagues of mine own some (running FreeBSD) and
proposed me to try to install woody on one box. The hardware is :

  raid controller : smartarray 641
  ethernet NIC : BCM5702 (subsystem : NC7760)

This will be my first woody install on raid hardware, so I'm
inexperienced.

Colleagues told me that woody install fails due to "old" kernel
2.4.18-bf24 which doesn't include recent modules for the raid (cciss)
and the NIC (tg3 seems better than bcm5700). I've searched the list
archive but I didn't really find an answer.

There is a workaround described in
http://www.riedmann.it/linux/linux-proliant.htm : using an additionnal
scsi card, an additionnal scsi drive an an additionnal NIC, all well
known by the woody installer. But this seems a little complicated to
me. Well, if this is the price...

Is anybody there that have more or less painlessly succeeded a woody
install on ML350 G3 or similar hardware? If yes, how?

Any clue/tip/link will be warmly welcomed :-)

Cheers,

Emmanuel

--
Emmanuel Halbwachs        Laboratoire de Photonique et Nanostructures
tel : (+33)1 69 63 61 34                                  CNRS UPR 20
fax : (+33)1 69 63 60 06                               Route de Nozay
mailto:Emmanuel.Halbwachs@lpn.cnrs.fr         91460 Marcoussis France