HP ProLiant DL380 G4 w/ Debian... If your familiar with this machine please help.

Hello,

I have a few questions about this server.

It has two CPU's 3.20 ghz / 800 mhz / 1MB L2
5120 MB RAM
6 hard disks on HP Smart Array 6i controller (36.4 GB Ultra320 SCSI HD each)
RAID set to RAID 5 (5 discs) with one spare (6th disk)
USB, 2 Ethernet ports, 1 ILO port, 1 SCSI port

My questions:

1.) Does this server come default with built in wireless access? If not, what do you recommend for wireless? It has PCI-X and PCI-E slots.

2.) If the processors are "Intel Xeon" CPU's.....then why is it possible to install (as I did with the live cd) this Ubuntu 11.04 version .... ubuntu-11.04-desktop-amd64.iso..... Why would amd64 dvd work with Intel processors?

3.) I would LIKE to install "Debian-6.0.3-amd64-DVD.iso" When I try and load it it freezes on the detecting network hardware screen. On the HP site there is no smart start cd/dvd for Debian. It is not supported but I have read people have done this. Any experiences with Debian on this machine, and what do you suggest as the best OS to use on this machine keeping security as a priority?

Thank you.

Hi Marcus Aurelius,

1) No Wireless integrated, it can be installed in one of the PCI* ports, recomendations?, well, you must install the faster and cheapest wireless card, is your decision.
2) You can intall a 64bits Operating System in this machine because the Intel Xeon have all the features needed to run this kind of software, amd64 in the iso name only mean 64bits.
3) I'm using a lot of HP DL servers and, normally, this kind of freeze problems are related to an incorrect driver shipped in the installation DVD, try to search the correct one and add it before the installation, all the Operating System permit this kind of taks with a shortcut at the boot time. About the Operating System recommended, I'm using Ubuntu, Suse (SLES and SLED), and Solaris. In my experience Solaris is the faster and, if it is correctly configured, the most secure.

Hi.

For some information about Intel, AMD, x86-64, amd64, etc., see x86-64 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Google and Wikipedia are your friends.

You could join the forum at Debian User Forums; Index page and post your question there. You may need to be more specific about freezes on the detecting network hardware screen . Quick guess -- the current version of Debian, squeeze, does not come with proprietary drivers, so you may need to find a driver for your ethernet and, if the RAID you are describing is hardware and/or fake RAID, then you may need to find one of those. I know that the installer looks for a DHCP server, but that would after identifying your network capability.

I also recall that there was either: 1) a special CD for installing on troublesome systems, or 2) an install option for that. I haven't needed such a capability for a long time, so you'd need to look for that. Again the Debian forum may be able to help you. (I do know that I had installed Debian on a Dell box that was so old that it did not have USB, and the installer hung there. I told the installer to skip that section by entering an installer message at boot time, and was then able to complete the install.)

We recently installed amd64 Debian squeeze on an Intel 4-core Xeon box, and had no trouble beyond the DHCP issue. We're using that as a virtual machine server, and every OS so far has installed fairly easily, but, of course, that's with some virtualized components (disk, network).

Good luck ... cheers, drl