Redhat – RHEL 5.5 server has most devices listed as “Unknown Device”

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When I run lspci on my RHEL 5.5 Server (HP ProLiant DL360p Gen8), most items look like this:

00:03.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Unknown device 3c0b (rev 07)
00:04.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Unknown device 3c20 (rev 07)
.. snip ..
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation Unknown device 1657 (rev 01)

etc. of the 63 entries, 57 of them say Unknown device. Note: I am not the person who originally purchased or set up this server, I am simply the person who has inherited it. The prior adminstrator was fired (you know how that goes).

The server seems to be working fine, but I am planning to update to Centos 6.4 soon and I want to make sure I know the right hardware configuration.

Using kudzu and and The PCI ID repository I was able to figure out what most of the devices are; however, I was not able to locate the drivers for these devices. I would think that most of them would be compiled into the Kernel?

Here are some examples of things I discovered:

Intel Corporation Unknown device 1d00 (rev 05) <---> C600/X79 series chipset 4-Port SATA IDE Controller
Intel Corporation Unknown devices 3c02  <---> Xeon E5/Core i7 IIO PCI Express Root Port 1a
Intel Corporation Unknown devices 3c20  <---> Xeon E5/Core i7 DMA Channel 0
Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 323b <---> Compaq Smart Array Gen8 RAID Controller

However, my attempts to find real drivers (that don't say Unknown Device) have failed. I tried intel's website, HP's website, Red Hat and CentOS RPM mirrors, typing the names of these hardware identifiers into Google… all to no avail.

My questions:

  1. Now that I know what these devices actually are, does it actually matter if I have the perfect drivers if nothing seems to be broken?
    • I don't know how to use kudzu very well. I was able to figure out to use kudzu -s -p but I want to be extra cautious I don't break anything.
  2. What about when I do the OS reinstall, should I attempt to have the correct RPMs handy (if I can find them?) Or should the installation DVD know what to do and I don't have to worry about it?

Best Answer

Please refer to the HP ProLiant RHEL Technical Exceptions Matrix entry for the DL360p Gen8 server.

The minimum support version of RHEL5 on that server is 5.7. This is simply because the ProLiant Gen8 servers were released last year and the version of RHEL you have predates them.

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It's not difficult to upgrade the server you have to RHEL 5.9, the current release as of this writing. That will bring you in line with support and take care of the issue you're writing about.

You don't need to download individual drivers for HP servers. The drivers are in the OS distribution and kernel drivers. You just need to use period-appropriate OS distributions...

As for your OS upgrade, I'm assuming you'll pursue a fresh installation rather than an in-place upgrade. Please install from a RHEL 6.4 DVD if you wish to avoid problems.

Post-installation, you can use the HP Support Pack for ProLiant or the newer HP Software Delivery Repository to pull down the management agents for the server via yum (starter guide here). The management agents provide reporting and enhanced monitoring to the installation. The Support Pack bootable DVD will also upgrade the server's firmware (incredibly important).

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