New versions of this document

New versions of this document will be announced regularly on the Usenet groups news:fr.comp.os.linux.annonces and news:comp.os.linux.annonces. They will also be updated on the various anonymous ftp sites which archive such informations, mainly ftp://metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO.

Hypertext versions of this and other Linux HOWTO are available on many web sites, including http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO and http://www.medasys-digital-systems.fr/mirror/linux/LDP/HOWTO. Most Linux distributions on CD-ROM include the HOWTO, often under the /usr/doc, directory, and you can also buy printed copies from several vendors. Sometimes the HOWTO available from CD-ROM vendors, ftp sites or printed format are out of date. If the date on this HOWTO is more than 6 months in the past, then a newer copy is probably available on the Internet. The site of reference for this HOWTO is http://www.medasys-digital-systems.fr/linux/HP-Howto/HP-HOWTO-EN

If you make a translation of this document into another language, please let me know so that I can include a reference to it here.

Suggestions

I rely on you, the reader, to make this HOWTO useful. If you have any suggestions, corrections, or congratulations :-) don't hesitate to send them to me <Bruno.Cornec@medasys-digital-systems.fr>, and I will try to incorporate them in a next revision.

I am also willing to answer general questions on HP hardware and software with Linux, as best I can. Before doing so, please read all of the information in this HOWTO, and then send me detailed information about the problem.

If you publish this document on a CD-ROM or in hardcopy form, a complimentary copy would be appreciated; mail me for my postal address. Also consider making a donation to the Linux Documentation Project to help support free documentation for Linux. Contact the Linux HOWTO coordinator, Guylhem AZNAR <guylhem@rrremovethis.oeil.qc.ca>.

Free Software or Open Source software

A free software (or Open Source software) is a software distributed with its source code, allowing its study, its transmission, its adaptation. The problem, in english, is the use of free, which has both meanings of "at no cost" and "without constraint". Here, it's the second use which has to be considered, hence the use of Open Source. To remember, think of free as speech, not beer.

Depending on the licenses used for its development, the constraints for users of such a software are various. The most open licenses (like the BSD one) allow code appropriation by third parties, including the resell of the resulting software (with or without modification) in commercial products, without any problem, and without owing something else to the originators than the mention of their copyright. Other licenses (like the GNU Public License or GPL) force every modified GPL software to be free GPL software itself ; this doesn't allow the use of such programs in a commercial one. Many other licenses exist, more or less open: the Artistic License (perl), the NPL one (mozilla), the QPL one (Qt) ...

A vast majority of free software is today under the GPL license, even if the BSD world takes always a great place, however less visible, mainly in the press.

Examples and counter-examples

First of all, free software and freeware shouldn't be mixed up. A freeware is not necessarily a software provided with its sources, on the contrary of a free software. On the other side, on the contrary of a freeware, you may be charged to obtain a free software (it's not in contradiction with the licensed used). The ambiguity, as stated before, comes from the word "free" . A freeware is then free of charge, but not necessarily "free of sources". (As well, the shareware has nothing to do with free software).

So examples of important and well-known free software are the Linux and FreeBSD operating systems, the Apache Web server, the SaMBa SMB server, GNU C and C++ compilers ... A contrario, examples of well-known freeware are the Internet Explorer browser, the Eudora Light mail reader, ...

Linux

Linux is a free operating system, superset of the POSIX norm. "Linux" points out the kernel alone. By extension, the name is also given to distributions based on that kernel plus a set of tools from the GNU project.

Linux is by consequence a Unix system, except that it doesn't use any proprietary code and is furnished under the GPL license, implying the availability of the sources. As every Unix system, it is multi-tasks, multi-users. It's also extremely portable, and it is available officialy today on processors such as Intel (i386 to Pentium III), Alpha, Motorola (680x0 and PowerPC), Sparc, StrongArm, Mips. Without mention of the ports, operational or in process on PalmPilot, Itanium (ex-Merced), PA-Risc, Crusoe ...

The system is today perfectly stable and mature. Versions "x.y.z" of the Linux kernel, where "y" is an even number, are stable and only bug corrections are generaly applied when "z" augments. Versions "x.y.z" of the Linux kernel, where "y" is an odd number, are development versions which may be instable and are reserved to developers or intrepids.

From time to time, when the kernel development stabilizes a "freeze" is announced to furnish a new "stable" version (even), and the development goes on on a new version (odd).

The current stable version is the version 2.2.14 (this last number may evolve following the rythm of corrections). Development has on the other side begun again with a 2.3 version currently in code freeze.

Numerous presentations of Linux are currently available. Among them, you should consult the one made by Michael Johnson at http://www.medasys-digital-systems.fr/mirror/linux/HOWTO/INFO-SHEET.html.

Free software philosophy

In fact, the philosophy promoted by the free software movement is not that different from the one proposed by the scientific movement till a long time already: to put in common ideas and collective knowledge to allow the progression of the research and the growth of this knowledge. The knowledge of the human genome is one of the examples of such a collaborative work.

The computer engineering environement, and especially the software one, seems to have turn away till the last 20 years from these base concepts of the scientific world. It prefers on the contrary to keep the customer captive instead of giving him the informations needed to exploit his computing environement the best he can. That's indeed following such a problem at the begining of the 80's that Richard Stallman, who was doing researches in artificial intelligence at the MIT, decided to create the GNU project. This project is the foundation of the current free software movement.

The main ideas promoted by this movement and stated by Richard Stallman himself are :

• Liberty: every user should be free to copy, diffuse, modify a program, either to share it with others, or to adapt it to his own needs. As well, he should be able to analyse it to understand, imitate, improve, verify its operations, as well as every scientific result is published and seen by the peers for verification, study, understanding and realisation of derived works. Could you imagine a vaccine against the liver cancer that another laboratory couldn't derive to make a vaccine against the pancres cancer.

• Equality: every person should have the same rights on the software. Thus the provider isn't priviledged and can't keep customers to whom he furnished his work captive. Could you think that only the producer of our vaccine could use it ?

• Fraternity: this mode of working encourages the whole computer engineering community to cooperate and thus to produce software more and more reliable and useful to all. Could you imagine that a discovery like the vaccine above couldn't help everyone and favour other discoveries.

More over the utopy of these ideas, we can find other reasons which allowed free software to spread so widely today. They are detailed in the section called The choice of free software.

The free software movement materializes itself also through a community of people. That community, informal meeting of personnalities, is heterogeneous in its contents, actions, ideas, even if all share the same belief in the freedom of the software. That community created for itself the tools needed to its communication : Internet and Usenet. And these communication tools are based of course on a lot of free software to work. Among the outstanding persons of this movement, we can present :

• Linus Torvalds, conceptor of Linux.

• Richard Stallman, GNU project conceptor.

• Eric S. Raymond, writer of several and excellent articles, which inspired so many vocations.

• Larry Wall, author of Perl and of the patch tool, and philosopher.

• Tim O'Reilly <ask_tim@oreilly.com>, free software advocate and editor of several books dedicated to them.

All these personalities are, above all, excellent computer engineers, which allows them to be recognized as major actors of the free software movement. Their human and communication qualities are also strong characteristics of their nature. In any case they aren't considered for their power, but for their knowledge.

Of course, the free software community is built of thousands of programmers, whose complete list would be too tedious. All share the will of producing useful work, free, and to be recognized for their technical qualities above all.

The choice of free software

To use free software to bring solutions in a computing environment is a choice. First, it is in favour of a plurality of solutions, mainly in the personal computer world which tends to be monopolistic. Then, the choice is made, and that's what is finally important, on the own qualities of free software, which are detailed just below.

Independantly of its qualities, it's possible to give other reasons of various nature, in favor of free software, depending on the type of the person met.

Wrong ideas on free software

Advocating free software consists also to mention some generally accepted ideas concerning them and to fight them.

Real problems around free software

It would not be honest to negate certain remaining problems linked to free software. Some have begun to disappear, other are inherent to the system, other at last will take time to diappear.

The first problem, inherent to the model of free software, is the multiplicity of tools and distributions available. So, if you want to setup a mail server, you have to choose between Sendmail, Exim, PostFix, Qmail, Smail. As well if you want to install Linux, you may choose between the distributions RedHat , SuSE, Slackware, enMandrake, Turbo Linux, Debian. This represents often a problem for the newcomer, but the esperienced user will always prefer to have a large choice he will confront to his particularities and to his experience. As long as an actor respects the rules by freeing his code (it's the case of the rpm and deb formats for example), there is little risk from the comunity point of view.

The second problem, inherent also to the free software birth, is the necessity to have strong Unix and Internet competences, to manage such solutions. The power available through these systems is proportional to the competence of their administrators. And that will stay true even with the growth of more and more grahical solutions to manage them. On the other side, you capitalize the investment in time to learn their functions and that doesn't disappear, because you don't have to re-learn eveything from one version to the other. Don't forget that systems you use daily seem to be simple, uniquely because you passed enough time to learn them. For Internet competences, it's a statement of the obvious to say that this investment isn't lost. At last, even with the work of translators to provide informations in french and other languages, a good knowledge in technical english is definitively a plus.

The last problem met in the implementation of free software solutions is to suceed in convincing some mnagers to go against the prevailing opinion. The aim of this part is precisely to give all sorts of argumentations to achieve that goal, but you need each time to show conviction to get his way in the end. As soon as these solutions will be adopted by big firms principaly, resistances will disappear.

Linux and other proprietary Unix (HP-UX, Tru64, AIX, Solaris, Irix)

The situation taken by all the hardware manufacturers place Linux today in the entry level (when it's taken in account) and their own Unix system in the middle and high level. Reality is sometimes more cruel than the situation wanted by the marketing department :-). Technically, a Linux distribution has no cause to be envious of the manufacturers Unix solutions, except for the moment the set of commercial applications. And we can often see that users dope their workstations with free software to complete their usage.

To be precise in the talk, we should consider manufacturers Unix solutions as split in stations and servers.

On the station side, there's no doubt in my mind: for a customer, the only reason today to buy one is linked to the availability of a software or a hardware which wouldn't exist in the free environment, or due to intrinsic performances of the machine. In the first case, we can see that this argument should have a short life time, because logically every software editor (except maybe hardware manufacturers) and every hardware manufacturer has interest in porting their applications or allowing the use of their hardware on all the major environments in the market. As shown by Oracle, Informix, Sybase, ... Linux becomes today one of the major environments. In the second case, the difference in term of performances between the Linux dominant platform (IA-32) and the other competitors decreases and should even disappear with the availability of the IA-64 architecture, which seems to be adopted largely by a majority of actors. More over, Linux is often available natively on the processors of these actors (Sparc, Mips, PowerPC, 68xxx, Alpha, Crusoe, PA-Risc to come). I think Linux may represent the famous unique and standard Unix that everybody dreamed of from a long time, without succeeding to impose it (the open and free characteristics brought by Linux are not without influence on that). I think that at the end hardware manufacturer Unix workstations will be restricted to some niches such as high end computation, virtual reality, ... and that as long as solutions are not available on a free environment. Linux offers all the functional qualities of the other Unix systems, and thus of the workstation, on a more various hardware platform and potentially at a better price, if on PCs. So it is the natural choice of every computer engineer with a strong Unix culture (old customer of the workstation) who will prefer that solution to the migration to a Microsoft system typically.

On the server side, in addtion to the points mentionned previously for the stations, problems are more complex. Ram, disks, processors capacities, extensions of every kind make them difficultly repleacable by machines with a IA-32 architecture for example. More over, certain solutions such as high availability clusters for example are not already in production in a Linux environment. The other brake is often linked to investments already done around software solutions deployed on these servers. Whatever their natural life time is much higher than those of the stations. Changes will thus be made more slowly in that domain. Here we can consider rightly Linux solutions as an entry/middle level solutions, when hardware manufacturer Unix servers are the middle/high level. The introduction of Linux in place of these machines will begin only with a massive availability of applications, mainly in the management sector.

The advantages of the hardware manufacturer solutions, explaining why they are so often chosen when applications are critical, are linked to the homogeneity of the solution (hardware and software mastered by the same entity, which can't invoke a third party in case of problem), and to the support and maintenance garantees furnished.

Finally, there is not so much antagonism between these systems, because they are full cousins. Their association allows today to computer teams "pro-Unix" to have solutions from start to finish, without having to lose in functions, as it's so often the case with other operating systems available for personal computers.

Linux and SCO

The comparaison between Linux and the SCO systems seems to me quite unbalanced. First, all the previous points are vaild here also. More over, SCO isn't a hardware manufacturer, so the homogeneity advantage disappears. the IA-32 Intel platform is supported by both systems, so cost is identical. On the other hand, the software solution has a disproportionate cost (few software provided in the base install, thus a lot of expenses to extend, as well as to increase the number of users). Having to manage one OpenServer, I can say that performances are far beyond those of a Linux system. More over, its conception is older, abounds of symbolic links which makes management complex. The hardware supported by SCO is less numerous than those Linux supports. Only stay as an advantage the installed base and the set of applications available. But for how long ? Besides the fact that SCO choose Monterey (AIX based) for the IA-64 port seems significant for the future reserved to OpenServer or UnixWare.

Linux and Windows NT

The comparaison is here more difficult, because Windows NT isn't an open system, as the precedings, which is already redhibitory for certain users. An excellent comparaison was made by John Kirch between Unix and Windows NT Server. I recommend to people searching to have an enlightened opinion on this subject to read it; it's updated regularly and was written by a specialist of both Microsoft and Unix operating systems. Financially, obvious advantage for the free software. And it's more obvious, as for SCO, if you consider the set of complementary software you need to use a server. The author evaluates the difference from 1 to 100 all the same ! Technically, either on the functions provided or on the reliability, the administration, the performances, the hardware supported, and more over the security, Unix systems and particularly free systems outperform what is proposed by Windows NT. The fact to have a GUI non independant from the kernel contributes greatly to the instability of NT, because it's more difficult to avoid errors in a GUI (there is no mastering possible of the user comportment in front of it) rather than in a kernel.

Which are the real advantages of Windows NT ?: the marketing power of Microsoft which persuades the world that computers equal Windows and which leans on the enormous installed base; its office applications (a monopolistic situation on the market) only available in this environment; the confusion maintained between the various flavours of Windows (95/98, NT, 2000), and between the server and client functions; its agreements with the biggest hardware manufacturers which often oblige them to provide a Microsoft system with their platforms; its technological initiatives to occupy the market in first, based on proprietary code and that often without respect of known or documented standards.

The lack of hegemony in the servers sector is the best reason to hope that a plurality of solutions may exist in the future for computers users, also at the desktop.

General informations

HP became recently concious of the importance taken by Linux and free software in general and on its machines particularly. Thus a web site dedicated to Linux in HP environment is now available at http://www.hp.com/go/linux.

In France, there is for a longer time a site on these themes, under the responsability of Jacques Misselis <Jacques_Misselis@hp.com>, hosted by l'Ecole Centrale de Lyon at the address http://hpwww.ec-lyon.fr/hpeduc/education.

On the other side, the firm Medasys , for which I work, put at disposition of the community a certain number of informations since 1997, available at http://www.medasys-digital-systems.fr/linux. This HOWTO is the result of this work.

HP also realized a synthesis document (PDF format) concerning his position vis à vis of Linux, the White Paper HP Linux Strategy.

HP is a member of Linux International.

Particular announces

HP also communicates through its web site around Linux and free software. You'll find some links here.

• FireHunter announce (10/06/1998)

  http://www.tmo.hp.com/tmo/press/English/PRTM0804813.html

• Covision program announce (01/27/1999)

  http://www.hp.com/pressrel/jan99/27jan99b.htm

• Linux support on NetServers and IA-64 announce (01/27/1999)

  http://www.hp.com/pressrel/jan99/27jan99.htm

• PA-Risc port annouce (03/01/1999)

  http://www.hp.com/pressrel/mar99/01mar99e.htm

• Informix HP association announce (03/02/1999)

  http://www.hp.com/pressrel/mar99/02mar99i.htm

• Kayak Linux support (03/17/1999)

  http://www.hp.com/pressrel/mar99/17mar99e.htm

• World Linux support announce (04/20/1999)

  http://www.hp.com/pressrel/apr99/20apr99a.htm

• HP OpenView announces (05/17/1999)

  http://www.openview.hp.com/solutions/itsm/press/press.asp?docid=314

• Availability of Apache on HP 3000 (Summer/1999)

  http://www.businessservers.hp.com/falladvisor/sum99/Summer99/apache.html

• Visualize Linux support announce (06/21/1999)

  http://www.hp.com/pressrel/jun99/21jun99g.htm

• Open Source Software commitment by HP (08/09/1999)

  http://internetsolutions.enterprise.hp.com/linux/news/PRelease4.html

• Aberdeen group analysis on HP position on free software (08/09/1999)

  http://internetsolutions.enterprise.hp.com/linux/news/aberdeen_white_paper.html

• HP announces the certification of its DAT and DLT products under Linux (02/02/2000)

  http://www.hp.com/pressrel/feb00/02feb00c.htm

• HP Brings Award-winning 3-D VISUALIZE Graphics to Linux Desktop (02/02/2000)

  http://internetsolutions.enterprise.hp.com/linux/feb02page.html

• Medasys chosen by Hewlett-Packard France Education/Research as Linux competence center

  http://hpwww.ec-lyon.fr/hpeduc/education/offre/linux/educ_linux.html

• Hewlett-Packard France Education/Research announces commitment to Linux promotion

  http://hpwww.ec-lyon.fr/hpeduc/education/offre/linux/hp_linux.html

HP France has also published an article on Linux and free software in its May 1999 issue of HP Computer News, an article on HP Linux support in the September 1999 issue, and an article on Linux RedHat solutions on HP Visualize workstation in the November 1999 issue.

Intel based computer range

Page last updated the 15th of March 2000.

That computer range is today the main set of HP machines supported by Linux, and that till many years. In case you didn't already do it before, some preliminaty readings are recommended before to try to install Linux on these platforms.

The Linux Installation HOWTO contains a great number of informations to install Linux. If you bought linux on a CD-ROM, chances are that installation instructions are provided with it (the little booklet inside the disk case, and/or files on the CD).

The Linux Kernel HOWTO should be read to have details on kernel construction. I will just mention here points which are specific to HP hardware.

Outside particular indication, Linux support means during the installation of a RedHat 6.1 distribution. In special cases, a kernel rebuild will be necessary to support completely some hardware elements. You should note that what is true for one distribution is generally true for another, as these functions are linked to the kernel or the XFree86 server, and not to the distribution itself.

The monitors range

The following table provides all of the informations on the support for this hardware by XFree86.

PA-Risc based computer range

The PA-Risc range is achitectured around a processor designed and realised by HP. First versions were produced in 1987. Currently the versions are named PA-8000 (8200, 8500, ...).

HP has announced at the begining of 1999 its intention to contribute to the port of Linux on its PA-Risc architecture. This port is a native one, which is different from a preceding project which used MkLinux on machines based on PA-7200. The work is currently done with The Puffin Group and more precise informations on the status may be found on their Web site. For the moment the work on the boot process is improved, a shell is launched... which dies rapidly :-)

The first machine concerned by the port is the A Class server. Tests are also done on 712 and 715. Other people begin also to work on PA-2.0 machines.

There is on the other side for these machines a Linux project based on the MkLinux micro-kernel. This project as developped within OSF. The web site mentionning informations is at http://www.gr.opengroup.org/mklinux/hppa/mkpa-rel.html.

The IA-64 range

HP is developping in collaboration with Intel a new generation of 64 bits processors called IA-64. The first processor of this new generation, called Itanium, should be there during 2000. The initial port of Linux on IA-64 was published the 2nd of february, 2000 and the sources of the project are available through ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/ia64. More informations on this topic may be found on this page of the HP labs : http://devresource.hp.com/devresource/Topics/IA64/IA64.html or on the reference site http://www.linuxia64.org

The printing product range

# REMOTE POSTSCRIPT 1200x1200 a4 {} PostScript Default {}
lj4000:\
        :sd=/var/spool/lpd/lj4000:\
        :rm=lj4000:\
        :rp=raw:\
        :if=/var/spool/lpd/lj4000/filter:
        :mx#0:\
        :sh:\

#ifconfig eth0:0 192.0.0.1

#gs -h
GNU Ghostscript 5.10 (1998-12-17)
Copyright (C) 1997 Aladdin Enterprises, Menlo Park, CA.  All rights reserved.
Usage: gs [switches] [file1.ps file2.ps ...]
Most frequently used switches: (you can use # in place of =)
 -dNOPAUSE           no pause after page   | -q       `quiet', fewer messages
 -g<width>x<height>  page size in pixels   | -r<res>  pixels/inch resolution
 -sDEVICE=<devname>  select device         | -dBATCH  exit after last file
 -sOutputFile=<file> select output file: - for stdout, |command for pipe,
                                         embed %d or %ld for page #
Input formats: PostScript PostScriptLevel1 PostScriptLevel2 PDF
Available devices:
   x11 x11alpha x11cmyk x11gray2 x11mono ap3250 imagen iwhi iwlo iwlq la50
   la70 la75 la75plus lbp8 ln03 lj250 lj4dith lp2563 m8510 necp6 oce9050
   r4081 sj48 st800 stcolor t4693d2 t4693d4 t4693d8 tek4696 xes deskjet
   djet500 djet500c dnj650c laserjet ljetplus ljet2p ljet3 ljet3d ljet4
   cdeskjet cdjcolor cdjmono cdj500 cdj550 paintjet pj pjxl pjxl300 uniprint
   bj10e bj200 bjc600 bjc800 epson eps9mid eps9high epsonc ibmpro jetp3852
   dfaxhigh dfaxlow faxg3 faxg32d faxg4 cp50 pcxmono pcxgray pcx16 pcx256
   pcx24b pcxcmyk pbm pbmraw pgm pgmraw pgnm pgnmraw pnm pnmraw ppm ppmraw
   tiffcrle tiffg3 tiffg32d tiffg4 tifflzw tiffpack tiff12nc tiff24nc psmono
   psgray bit bitrgb bitcmyk pngmono pnggray png16 png256 png16m jpeg
   jpeggray pdfwrite pswrite epswrite pxlmono pxlcolor nullpage
Search path:
   . : /usr/share/ghostscript/5.10 : /usr/share/fonts/default/ghostscript :
   /usr/share/fonts/default/Type1
For more information, see /usr/doc/ghostscript-5.10/use.txt.
Report bugs to ghost@aladdin.com; use the form in bug-form.txt.

HP softwares

Third party softwares linked to HP

Linux as file server

The sharing service uses 2 MB of RAM, and 2 more MB per share. In case of a unique share (users space for example), it leads to a 2 MB consumption per user. In the proposed case, we estimate that each user has 100 MB of disk space on the server, with an evolution to 200 MB 3 years later. Processor resources used are relativeley small, an entry level model will be sufficient from that point of view. We will priviledge the I/O speed with Ultra 2 LVD SCSI at 80 MB/s, if the budget allows it, and 10.000 RPM disks.

Linux as print server

The sharing service uses 2 MB of RAM, and 2 more MB per printer shared. In case of a unique share (One printer per user typically), it leads to a 2 MB consumption per user. In the proposed case, we estimate that each user prints simultaneously files of 5 MB in average, thus we need to have that space available on the server. Processor resources used are relativeley small, an entry level model will be sufficient from that point of view.

Web Server

The Web service uses 2.5 MB of RAM, in static mode (simple HTML pages) and 5 MB of RAM in dynamic mode (HTML pages generated from per, php, ...) per user. The disk space needed is function of the nature of the server, knowing that most of the consumption comes from images. Processor resources used are important, thus it could be useful to consider the increase in frequency and the addition of processors, because this type of traffic could be quite well done in parallel. We will priviledge also the I/O speed with Ultra 2 LVD SCSI at 80 MB/s, if the budget allows it, and 10.000 RPM disks.

Mail Server

Generally, this machine is used as both SMTP (sending and reception of messages) and POP server (keeper of messages and manager of client accesses). The SMTP Mail service uses 2 MB of RAM per user. The POP Mail service uses 2 MB of RAM per user. The disk space needed becomes more and more important as long as attachments (images, various documents) take the greatest place in exchanges via e-mail. We consider in that case that an average mail box size is 50 MB. Processor resources used are important, thus it could be useful to consider the increase in frequency and the addition of processors, because this type of traffic could be quite well done in parallel.

Firewall/Proxy/Web-Cache server

Generally, this machine is both a Firewall server, a proxy (in both directions) and a cache for the Web because all requests go through it. The Firewall service uses 1 MB of RAM. The Proxy service uses 0.3 MB per incoming relay. The Web cache service uses 0.5 MB per user. The disk space needed is function of the parameters of the cache Web server. In that case, we consider 20 MB per user. Processor resources used are important, due to the analysis of IP packets. Thus it could be useful to consider the increase in frequency.