Linux on HP servers

Problem: You want to check the hardware health status on you debian server running on an HP ProLiant hardware.

After spending some time on the HP.com homepage, I got really angry. HP does a really bad job on their support homepage. If you search for DL360 G5 you see a list of operating systems. The list of Debian OSs ends with 5.0. There you find an outdated bloated ISO image with lots of stuff. It looks like, if HP never used Linux on their machines, and knows nothing about how Linux admins do their work (CLI! CLI! CLI!)

But then, I found out…

Solution: HP is providing a (hard to find) Debian repository of system administration tools. So add the following line to you “/etc/apt/sources.list”
   deb http://downloads.linux.hp.com/SDR/downloads/MCP squeeze/current non-free

Then you can do:
# aptitude update
# aptitude install hp-health

   # hpasmcli  
   hpasmcli> show iml      # message list
   hpasmcli> show fan      # fan status
…. etc.

Versions: tested on Debian Squeeze 6.0 and HP tools Version 9.25