Introduction
Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) Linux on the HP Mediasmart EX470/EX475
This is a work in progress, not a finished guide (yet)!
Copied from the HP store:
Have multiple PCs on a home network? Want the flexibility to enjoy your digital experiences from anywhere over the Internet? Check out our MediaSmart Server EX470, which provides remote access to files on the server, automatic backup of all networked PCs, media streaming across your home network, a photo sharing Web site, and virtually limitless storage expandability (500GB plus three empty expansion bays).
Well. That’s all true if you keep WHS on it. With any GNU/Linux it can easily do much more. I like Ubuntu, so thats what I installed on mine.
Here’s how I did it.
Table of contents
- Introduction
- Table of contents
- Changelog
- Hardware specification
- Installing Ubuntu
- Network
- Harddrives and controllers
- Other hardware
- Misc. stuff
- Links
Changelog
- 2008-10-09
- v0.1 First outline.
- 2008-10-10
- v0.2 Fleshing things out quite a bit.
Hardware specifications
This is the hardware you find in your HP Mediasmart Server EX470/475.
- CPU
- AMD Sempron 3400+. Regular AM2 socket, so LE-1620 & LE-1640 works. With a BIOS mod you can get a dual-core processor like the BE-2300 to work.
- Memory
- 512Mb, DDR2-533 module. Both 2GiB and 4GiB modules works with the chipset. Memory upgrade howto
- Harddrive
- SATA 7200 rpm, 500GiB. 1 in EX470, 2 drives in EX475. I found a Seagate ST3500630AS in mine.
- Expandability
- 2 or 3 empty slots for 3.5″ SATA drives. 4 USB ports (1 front, 3 back). 1 eSATA port. 4 port SATA multipliers works with this chipset in Windows at least, possibly in GNU/Linux as well. That would give a possible 12TiB via SATA. No disk-size limit, 1.5TiB disk works.
- Chipset
- SiS ?? and SiS ??
- VGA Chipset
- SiS 761Gx PCIE VGA Display Adapter. Need special cable to connect to the motherboard header. The header is for a serial port, PS2 keyboard, PS2 mouse and VGA.
- SATA Controller
- SiS Raid Controller
- IDE Controller
- Marvell 88SE6121 SATA II Controller. Not used from what I can tell. It makes the
pata_marvellmodule load. - Onboard flashdisk
- 247MiB Flashdrive. Holds the restoration stuff for WHS. DO NOT TOUCH! You can easily brick your server if you fuck this one up. Then it won’t go past BIOS/POST.
- Ethernet
- SiS 191 Gigabit ethernet interface.
- Dimensions
- Width: 14cm (5.5″)
Height: 25cm (9.8″)
Depth: 23cm (9.2″) - Weight
- EX470: 5.17 kg (11.4 lb.)
EX475: 5.76 kg (12.7 lb.)
dmesg output
It’s just a lot of text. Linked it here.
lspci output
Lots of text. Linked it here.
Installation
To install Ubuntu you need these things…
- System disk from your HP EX470. Be careful removing it, there is a little lock that keeps the system drive in place. Twist the lock (I didn’t get a key) with a flat screwdriver or a knife. Pull it out, when it feels like the plastic is about to break you pull some more.
- Ubuntu server-install disc.
- A computer with spare place for the system disk. Or you can place it in an external case with a USB or SATA connection.
- USB network adapter. Hopefully not necessary, but a nice backup to have.
- Time.
- Patience.
Getting Ubuntu
Go to releases.ubuntu.com and download a copy of the server iso of Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex. Or perhaps use a mirror near you for higher speed. When you got it, check the md5 checksum an if it’s okay, burn it.
Installing
Not that much to it, if you have a USB network adapter please plug it in during install so that it will be recognised later.
The important stuff is to make /boot a FAT16 partition (FAT32 might work, didn’t try), about 100MiB should be enough. Install grub to the master boot record. ( (hd0) in grub terms). This might seem odd, and why yes it is. The EX470 BIOS seems to check the filesystem on the drive it is about to boot. Same hold for USB-sticks.
It pretty much is a requirement for fstab to use UUID=xxxx... instead of /dev/sdb1 because stuff will shift around when you move the disk from the installation computer to the server.
Software you need
Really important is to have openssh-server installed, otherwise you won’t get access to the server once it boots.
Watch out
Make sure you have a smoothrunning boot-process, because troubleshooting a headless server without serial-console or network access isn’t easy.
Network
It’s not exactly unimportant in a server. I do not have the onboard gigabit ethernet working right now. Working on it…
Temporary USB network
Ubuntu loads the rtl8150 module for my USB network adapter. Ubuntu is set up to get the ip and stuff from my DHCP-server (my router).
This is my main access point for now, because sis190 isn’t quite working for me yet.
SiS 191 with the sis190 driver
I have not tried the official driver from their support-page. Don’t know if it works, but it is dated (Seems to be from 20th December 2004).
One shot at how to make it work with the sis190 driver already in the kernel. The ISA bridge pci-id was already added to the module in 2.6.27 that comes with Ubuntu 8.10.
According to this (and other) post, you’re supposed to add { "HP EX470 PHY", { 0x4d, 0xd010 }, LAN, 0 }, in a chip table. Didn’t make any difference for me.
Harddrives and controllers
The system drive
Wrong default driver
The module sata_sis is not the right driver, it only gives you access to the drive in the lowest slot in the chassi. And it does not support hotswap.
The right modules
The one you want is the AHCI module (ahci), which is an open standard and quite a few SATA-chips use it with good results.
I have yet to find out how to block sata_sis from loading. Only thing left to try is leaving it out (deleting it).
Hotswap
Howto hotswap a disk. Well, first apt-get install scsiadd to get a package that will do (almost) all of the work for you.
When I get the right driver to work I’ll tell you the rest.
Other hardware
There seems to be a paralell-ata chip in the machine but a visual inspection of the motherboard reveals no obvious headers, which to bad, one could have some fun with one of those.
Fans, sensors and LEDS
This is as far as I can tell the only discussion about how to control the fancier stuff this little box can do. More precisely, I want my light show!
Misc. stuff
One thing you might want to do is change the BIOS power management setting, so that your server boots when there is power again, like after a blackout. The guide that I linked was made by someone that was/isn’t using their server headlessly but have a vga monitor attached. So with some careful keyboarding you can follow their instructions and change this setting.
