Today, I install Debian on Proliant ML150 G2.

Sadly, the SATA adapter, Marvell MV88SX6041 4-port SATA II PCI-X Controller (rev 07) PCI ID 11ab:6041, is supported only on specific version of Red Hat and SuSE. In HP Insight Diagnostics CD, there are binary drivers for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and SuSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9. No open source driver of the SATA adapter is available now.

I found there are usblinux in the HP Insight Diagnostics CD. I copied it into USB storage and configure it bootable, as described in the CD. I booted it with "bash" mode. I noticed /root/compaq/load_drivers.sh. When I executed it, it tried to load several drivers, including aar81xx and bcm5700. aar81xx is the driver module for the SATA adapter and bcm5700 is the driver module for the Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5721 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express.

Then, I modified the initrd.img to include several program such as cfdisk, e2fsprogs, busybox and required shared library by them. I booted it from USB storage again, and partitoned the /dev/sda by using cfdisk and created filesystems:

 # mount -t proc proc /proc
 # mkswap /dev/sda2
 # swapon /dev/sda2
 # mkfs -j /dev/sda1
 # mkdir /mnt/sda1
 # mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1
 # ifconfig eth0 inet xx.xx.xx.xx netmask yy.yy.yy.yy broadcast zz.zz.zz.zz
 # cd /mnt/sda1
 # wget -O vmlinuz http://myserver/tmp/vmlinuz

At the same time, I prepared base files by using debootstrap.

 # debootstrap sarge sarge
 # cd sarge
 # tar zcf ../sarge.tar.gz .

And copied it to the Proliant by wget.

 # mkdir tmp
 # cd tmp
 # wget -O sarge.tar.gz http://myserer/tmp/sarge.tar.gz

I modified initrd.img again to have /linuxrc like this:

 mount -t proc proc /proc
 modprobe aar81xx
 modprobe scsi_mod
 modprobe sd_mod
 modprobe bcm5700
 exit

and modified syslinux.cfg as root=/dev/sda1 from root=/dev/ram0.

However, it failed to boot by "unable to open console.". I booted with previous initrd.img and created necessary device files, such as console, tty[0-7]. Also copied device files in initrd.

I booted again with /linuxrc, and it worked! I fixed /etc/network/interface, /etc/hostname, /etc/resolv.conf and so on. I made sure to create device files by MAKEDEV std in /dev directory.

Then, I put vmlinuz and initrd in the /boot directory as follows.

• initrd.img-2.4.20-28.7-ss7.10.11
• vmlinuz-2.4.20-28.7-ss7.10.11

Set up grub boot loader.

 # grub-install /dev/sda
 # update-grub

Checked /boot/grub/menu.lst and fixed kopt as "root=/dev/sda1 ro ramdisk_size=50000 debug noht ide=nodma".

Boot from SATA disk using grub. Fine. Now, I've got Debian on HP Proliant ML150 G2!

I've used HP NetServer E200, PentiumIII 600MHz with 64MB memory(!). Today, I got 5 times of bogomips(Xeon 3.2GHz) and 50 times(!) of memory (3GB).