IBM® Netfinity 5500-M20
Linux Compatibility Testing Results

System Type: Server
Test Completed: 1999-07-27

IBM® Netfinity 5500-M20 is awarded the AppLabs Linux Compatibility mark.

AppLabs' www.Linux-Tested.com compatibility testing of this system showed the following distributions compatible with the IBM® Netfinity 5500-M20:

SuSE 6.2

Caldera OpenLinux 2.3

TurboLinux Server 4.0

This document presents the compatibility testing results.

System Configuration

The following table defines the system configuration tested by AppLabs.

System Configuration as Tested
Company	IBM
Model	IBM® Netfinity 5500-M20
BIOS Revision	Revision 0
Main Board and Chipset	IBM® Motherboard
Processor(s)	Four (4) Intel® Pentium® II Xeon® processors 450
RAM	NA
HBA	NA
Motherboard Features and Capabilities	NA
Display Adapter	S3 Trio 64 Plus
Serial Ports	Seven (7) 16550 compatible
Parallel Ports	One (1) Enhanced Bi-directional
USB Ports	None
I/O Ports and buses
Host Bus Adapter	NA
Network Interface	3Com® Boomerang 100Base TX
Audio Chipset / Sound Card	NA
Optical Drive	IDE
Hard Drive	NA
Floppy Drive	Standard 1.44MB
Keyboard	Micorsoft Natural keyboard
Pointing Device	3-button PS/2 mouse
Miscellaneous Hardware

Testing Results

The following table defines the hardware as tested in this system by AppLabs, and provides the pass/fail results.

Tests and determinations are available for reference in ASCII format for immediate viewing.

Test Comment Result
Installation Testing
CD-ROM Installation PASSED
NFS/FTP Installation PASSED
Device Auto Probing PASSED
Base System Testing
Kernel Compatibility PASSED
GRUB/LILO Compatibility PASSED
Heavy I/O Test PASSED
Network Test NA
Network Load Test (Not required on workstation test) PASSED
SMP Test (Only required multiprocessor systems) NA
Display Adapter
Console Compatibility PASSED
X Server Compatibility NA
Stand Alone Monitor (Laptop Test Only) NA
Simultaneous Display CRT/LCD (Laptop Test Only) NA
Sound Adapter
Basic Sound Compatibility NA
Advanced Sound Availibility NA
Advanced Sound Compatibility NA
Serial Ports
Kernel Detection PASSED
Compatibility Testing PASSED
Throughput Testing NA
Parallel Ports
Kernel Detection PASSED
Compatibility Testing PASSED
Mouse
Kernel Detection PASSED
Compatibility Testing PASSED
Keyboard
Compatibility Testing PASSED

Notes and Observations:

Caldera 2.3 Notes:

1. User must reconfigure and re-compile kernel before rebooting system.

2. Distribution will not correctly identify the video driver. Use the VGA_16 X driver when setting up X.

3. Lisa floppies made from CDROM will not properly boot system, locking up at LILO boot prompt. Cannot do a remote install due to this problem.

TurboLinux Server 4.0 Notes:

1. Distribution will not correctly identify the video driver. Use the VGA_16 X driver when setting up X.

SuSE 6.2 Notes:

SuSE has bootdisk image which can be found at:

ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/update/6.2/disks/servraid

1. Download this image and put it onto floppy using dd. Boot with this diskette then install from CD. After system is running, user can boot from the CD, but will need to apply the patch mentioned above. User is advised to download the 2.2.12 kernel and apply the patch to that kernel instead of the one included with the distribution. After the kernel is patched and compiled, the user needs to install the lilo.rpm update found on the first CD in /unsorted/lilo. This will update the lilo program. User must then run lilo and system will boot from the hard disk.

2. Tester could not get the onboard NIC device working. Testing was done with a 3Com® NIC installed into a PCI port.

3. Distribution will not correctyl identify the video driver. Use the VGA_16 X driver when setting up X.

4. Printer setup under SuSE did not work. This is a configuration problem with the distribution and not with the IBM® hardware.

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