Good os for dual 800mhz Itanium?

M

miazmaticdotcom

Gawd
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May 3, 2003
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My friend dropped $700 on a Compaq Proliant PL590, only to find out that he couldn't get Windows Server 2003 under the machine license because the PL590 was only released to developers.

Anyway, the thing has two 800MHz Intel Itaniums and we're wondering what a good OS would be to run on it? Prefer Linux, but Windows is fine too. Native Itanium supports is always nice (they are NOT x86-64).
 
The bump.

The thing is IA-64, so it looks like Mandrake will support it.

Any thoughts on getting Windows Server 2k3 or a different Linux distro?
 
Gentoo? Debian? FreeBSD? Really depends on what you are going to run on it. But, Linux is the route I would go.
 
I know that they all have IA64 binaries, but I'm wondering which is best? I want to use it as a phat server (File server, folding, LAN party dedicated).

Also, the HDDs are SCSI, which distro comes with SCSI support built in?
 
I'd personally use FreeBSD, but I think it will mostly depend on what you're used to.

I really don't know if you'll be able to run x86-binaries on it in linux/BSD, btw, and even if you can it will won't be impressively fast, which means that game servers ... might not be ideal. They don't tend to come with source, nor IA64-binaries.
 
With what you're going to be running, I say FreeBSD as well. Gentoo can be a little flaky for servers IMO. Debian is kinda out dated.

The nice thing is that if you try one and don't like, you can move to the next one in the list. With all the different varations of Linux and BSDs, a lot of it comes down to preference. Two completely different distros can provide the exact same experience and stability. That's when things like package management systems come in to play (apt, emerge, etc...).
 
Here are the distro's we have tried:

Fedora core - hang @anaconda start - crapped
RedHat AS 3 - hang @anaconda - crapped
WhiteBoxAS3 - hang @anaconda - crapped
DebianIA64 - SCSI Driver problems - crapped

Mandrake 8.x - It works, but I have yet to find a purpose.

I called hp. they said that was a 1st gen system designed so software developers had something to test on. the itanium architecture was abandoned due to cost effectiveness

thanky for your help.

Ben
 
miazmaticdotcom said:
I called hp. they said that was a 1st gen system designed so software developers had something to test on. the itanium architecture was abandoned due to cost effectiveness
Click to expand...

This is true. I know some people from a project back a little that ran some Itaniums. I can try and get a hold of them and see what they used. My early guess...since we make it in house....HP-UX.
 
djnes said:
This is true. I know some people from a project back a little that ran some Itaniums. I can try and get a hold of them and see what they used. My early guess...since we make it in house....HP-UX.
Click to expand...

Yeah, we realize that obviously it probably shipped with HP-UX, but have heard that it sucks and really don't want to use it.
 
miazmaticdotcom said:
Yeah, we realize that obviously it probably shipped with HP-UX, but have heard that it sucks and really don't want to use it.
Click to expand...

It's most likely rock solid, but I guess it's kind of hard to find the software, and I have not idea if it'll be easy or not to compile, say, apache for it. :D (And can you get hold of a better compiler than gcc? I'm fairly sure one exists for HP-UX, but getting hold of it might not be easy.)

Also, it's most likely a bit unlike your average linux or BSD, so it'd take time getting used to. But "sucks"? Probably not.
(Now, if you want a challenge, put OpenVMS on it.)
 
Zlash said:
I guess you don't know how debian works...it's hardly outdated.
Click to expand...
I know there are ways around it. Yes, I know how Debian works. I use it for my file servers. I love Debian for servers.
 
miazmaticdotcom said:
Yeah, we realize that obviously it probably shipped with HP-UX, but have heard that it sucks and really don't want to use it.
Click to expand...

The rest of the industry would beg to differ about it sucking, but it's certainly not easy as easy to use as Win2003 Server.
 
djnes said:
The rest of the industry would beg to differ about it sucking, but it's certainly not easy as easy to use as Win2003 Server.
Click to expand...
Of course it is, to a trained user, just as Windows 2003 Server is fairly easy to someone who is trained to use Windows.
 
Bummer.

miazmaticdotcom - is there a distro of Suse that could be loaded on this machine?

Recently Novell was giving away free copies of Suse 9.1 on three DVDs. I've got mine and I won't be using it anytime soon, so I'd be glad to send copies your way if you like. I think this is a really interesting project, I'd love to see it come to fruition.
 
Well, the thing is, it doesn't have a DVD drive (I don't think, keep in mind this is a friend's machine) and it has a SCSI bus so hooking up an ATAPI DVD may be difficult. It may have an IDE bus as well.

Like he said when I let him post above, Manrdake 8.1 is working, but now we want to get it working really well so we can do cool stuff with it. Thanks for all the help everyone.
 
Glad to hear it's going well. If you want a SCSI DVD-ROM...link

And it's even a slot-loader, in black (fourth one down).


EDIT: Co-worker just mentioned that NetBSD ought to work on it, as would Slackware. Just in case you want to try any more OS ideas later.

EDIT: Also, a friend told me Windows Server 2003 will load on it
 
Thanks for all the great ideas sm8000. Looks like we do have a wide range of options and it all just depends on trying them and figuring out which one we like best. The idea is to make this huge paperweight useful. Wish us luck.
 
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