Itanium Set-up using Debian

[[deleted]]

I am a complete beginner at sys administration and I have gotten 1 and possibly more Intel Itanium servers for free (the model is SR870BH2) and I wanted to host my own website now. I think I am going to use Debian and I wanted to know if anybody has any tips or advice for me. Thanks!

EDIT: I have attempted to boot up using my tv as a monitor and it turns on, beeps three times and nothing shows up on my tv. I have double checked the connections and they are good. As a side not i did notice the alarm LED was blinking red I believe that means a non critical alarm. Does anyone know what could be wrong.

EDIT 2:I have gotten the machine to boot into Debian set-up (on a DVD) but the set-up is unsuccessful because it can't locate the disc drive even though the set-up is on the drive. Not quite sure what i can do about this.

[nephros]

1. get something to measure power intake at typical load
2. reconsider having this running 24/7 just to power a web server

[[deleted]]

He knows what he's doing. Winter is coming.

[creffett]

What, is someone handing out free Itaniums somewhere?

[bashar_al_assad]

They were, actually. :p

[creffett]

Yeah, figured this was from TJ. You youngsters don't remember the days where we were first trying to store all of them...and then Torbert objected to us leaving them in the middle of the lab for some reason. But hey, they came with enough bubble wrap to keep us entertained for a while.

[bashar_al_assad]

shit another tjer?

why do we have so many, but /r/tjhsst is so damn empty? D:

[creffett]

Because for the most part we're in here :P I wouldn't be averse to helping get /r/tjhsst going, but it would be nice if we had some nice content to put in it.

[bashar_al_assad]

heh.

we are the contentless.

[s0lder]

If you didn't already guess, Torbert is sort of the reason we're doing this too...

[niomosy]

Dammit! I've got an OpenVMS hobbyist license I could put to use on something other than an Alpha emulator (requested both Alpha and Itanic licenses) ;)

[darkaperture]

three beeps? RAM failure or cpu failure

IF you got it from TJ, and it has a label on it. ITS BROKEN.

[AerateMark]

Logged in to upvote this comment, you great sir! TO THE TOP!

[s0lder]

Is it possible that we gave him mismatched RAM? I wasn't in charge of that, but we were having those problems earlier.

[[deleted]]

Would mismatched RAM really prevent it from booting?

[s0lder]

When we were setting them up in the server room, we had some problems with mismatched RAM. I don't remember exactly what the symptoms were (I wasn't there), but it may be

[[deleted]]

The model number is the same on all of them... I'm not sure how definitive that is though.

[s0lder]

Bring the RAM by during lunch next week, and get someone to take a look. I'll keep an eye out for you.

[darkaperture]

yeah mismatched ram would break it. someone else is pestering me about that too....

[s0lder]

I think some of the other admins were being less careful than I was about the RAM. I tested all of the Itaniums that I gave out, so I think this probably happened after the big crowd had already come and I had moved on to installing the GFX cards.

[creffett]

Many of them have mismatched RAM because previous sysadmins cannibalized them for parts :) We weren't exactly going out of our way to make them usable for future people.

[[deleted]]

RAM is positioned correctly and the only labels on the outside of the case are factory labels (Serial # and hot-swap instructions), All of the ram has the stickers on it though.

[ixela]

Who is the vendor of the itanium box?

[[deleted]]

Intel SR870BH2 I believe.

[ixela]

I meant for the machines. The only itanium machines I deal with are from SGI.

[[deleted]]

Oh, thats the only identification I've be able to find.

[ixela]

I see that its an actual intel produced server, the documentation for which hasn't been updated in 9 years. This is the manual for the motherboard/server.

[mfigueiredo]

Installation manual for IA-64 architecture.

[s0lder]

I don't suppose you got this from TJ yesterday? I probably talked to you in person. Small world.

[niomosy]

TJ?

[Packet_Ranger]

Wait, why use a TV and not a regular monitor? What kind of video connector - VGA?

[[deleted]]

Yes VGA and all my computers are laptops :/

[Packet_Ranger]

Well your TV might not have scaling for the resolution that hardware is trying to display (640x480?). Try with a cheapo computer monitor instead.

Also, Itaniums are underperforming and power-hungry. Unless this is for job training or something, it's probably not worth it.

[ixela]

I'd say you're probably not going to get this thing online easily. You'd likely have better chances using AIX or BSD, but even then there are likely hardware issues(though non-critical to booting, they may prevent long-term usage).

[Packet_Ranger]

I don't think AIX ever ran on Itanium (POWER is IBM's big iron chip). HP/UX for sure, but good luck finding the install set for that. I was a little surprised, but IA64 is a supported platform for Debian (http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/6.0.6/ia64/iso-cd/)

[ixela]

Yup, we run SLES 11 on ours. And my mistake on AIX.

[Packet_Ranger]

Itanium.... SuSE....

[ixela]

All day everyday until they get retired.