This section presents HP hardware supported today by Linux. Informations are based on the latest stable version of the Linux kernel, which is currently version 2.2.18. A development kernel (version 2.4test) is also available but doesn't offer any garantee of stability.
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 6.2 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.
HP has a new program called "Freedom of Choice" on the whole desktop range. Linux is thus one of hte operating systems pushed by HP. Cf:
and .
A FAQ
is also available.
HP insures the support of certified Linux hardware by the following method : all the machines have the
Diagtool
utility. If this utility indicates a problem, it's taken in account by HP maintenance. If it doesn't, it's considered as a software problem and should be reported to the distribution provider.
The following tables indicate the state of Linux support by these platforms :
Please refer to the
Hardware Howto and Ethernet Howto
for other details concerning the support of some hardware elements by Linux.
For video chipsets support, a fundamental page is the one of
XFree86
with its supported
chipsets
list and the new running developments by
Suse
(Think, in that case, to download also
the configuration tool) and
RedHat
at the following addresses :
Commercial servers are also available, as those of
X-Inside and MetroLink
Netvectra are not supported by Linux.
Driver supporting the
HP GPIB cards (IEEE 488) HP 27209 (= HP 82990, HP 61062, HP 88500) and HP 82335
is available at the following address :
To use a Cirrus Logic GD 5465 AGP card, with a version below Xfree86 3.3.3, you have to use an option in the file
XF86Config : Option "xaa_no_color_exp".
Specifications of that card should be consulted on Elsa web site.
This card is equiped with an hardware OpenGL accelerator.
Under Linux, there is an OpenGL compatible layer called Mesa.
This layer begins to support hardware accelerators, and among them the 3DLabs chipset which is on Elsa Gloria cards.
This card is only supported from the 3.3.6 version of XFree86. Nevertheless, even in that version, this is a preliminary support, which isn't as stable as the Frame Buffer mode.
On the other hand, to be able to install a RedHat 6.1 version, you should do that in text mode, because the server provided (3.3.5) doesn't support this card.
If you have a dual-boot system, booting first on Windows, and initialize the card through its driver seems to improve the oprations then under Linux (warm reboot).
These cards are only supported with a specific X server XFCom_i810/5 downloadable in both format
RPM or tar.gz
and a complementary module for the kernel agpgart, downloadable in both format
SRPM or tar.gz (old).
Detailed documentations on the installation are provided at
and
To summarize, once the X server installed, the module compiled and installed, it's sufficient to modify with the following parameters the file
/etc/X11/XF86Config :
You have to note that the agpgart module provided by Intel should replace the one delivered in the kernel so that it works. You then have to reinstall it, particularly when a kernel update occurs.
To use the D6692A card, you need to use a 2.1.122 kernel at least.
Previous kernels didn't handled correctly the shared IRQ between the network and SCSI parts of the card. In particular, a standard RedHat 5.2 version doesn't allow to the network part to be supported. You have to update your kernel with a recent one (preferably 2.2.18) and the distribution with the complementary packages needed.
The chipset 2EM (Vendor id: 125d - device id: 1978)
is supported in 2.2.14 kernel and upper. Version 3 (Vendor id: 125d - device id: 1998)
on the other side is only supported for the moment by an alpha-version
maestro3,
driver, in the
AlsaRem.
project
(version >= 0.5.10)
driver, and in the commercial software
Open Sound System
. The latest version of the ESS Maestro driver is available from the
reference site.
The Alsa project has for primary goals to develop drivers to support sound cards in Linux, being fully compatible with current OSS drivers, bringing more functionalities and supporting more hardware.
All the information on this project, as well as sources under the GPL license, are available from their home page
RPMs for RedHat 6.2 and Turbo Linux 6.0 distribution are available at the address
On that machine, the Bios doesn't give the right amount of memory which is in the machine to Linux. You need to use a line such as
append="mem=xxxM" at the begining of /etc/lilo.conf
where xxx is your RAM in MB.
The support of "big size" IDE disks (for example, 27 GB disks provided for the XU 800) on these machines needs a kernel 2.2.15 at least.
If you intend to use both the sound chipset and a PCMCIA card in this laptop, in order to avoid conflicts at input/output ports level, you'll have to modify the file
/etc/pcmcia/config.opts
to change the line 6 to
include port 0x300-0x4ff, port 0x1000-0x17ff
The NSC PC87108/338 chipset controlling IrDA on this model is supported by the 0.92 kernel.
(Source : )
Some users had to apply the same tric for their Omnibook 4150 with success.
The integrated modem card is not supported under Linux
(ESS ES56CVM-PL).
The installation of a RedHat 6.2 distribution gives a problem when rebooting the system, at the PCMCIA initialisation. You have to install the latest version of the pcmcia-cs package at
To use the network, you need a tulip driver modified by P. "goldpenguin" Depouilly, and available at
In order to use the native SCSI controler you need to disable in the Bios the option "Reserve PCI Bus Numbers", in the menu PCI Device Setting.
(Indication of GILLYNN COUCH)
To use the native SCSI bus of this machine, it's necessary to use the sym53c8xx driver with a version upon 1.6c. A driver disk for RedHat 7.0 is available there. For the SuSE 7.0 distribution, you have to enter the manual mode to load the driver, as autodetection doesn't work correctly.
In order to use the native SCSI controler you need to desactivate in the Bios
the "reserver PCI Bus #s", in the menu PCI Device Setting.
The PS/2 system doesn't work correctly with a RedHat 6.1 or 6.2 distribution. In order to correct that you need to either put the machine in MPS 1.1, in the BIOS, or use a kernel above 2.3.47 in MPS 1.4 mode.
The network card doesn't work correctly with the kernel of the RedHat 6.2 distribution.
Attention, the XF86_SVGA server works correctly with this mother board embedded version only above XFree86 3.3.5, due to the use of different frequencies (In particular, use the updates for
RedHat 5.2/6.0).
To be able to boot with the RedHat 5.1 boot disk, and to have the support of the 3C905B-TX card, you need to do the following :
# Log as root. Go in the home directory (~root)
#cd ~
# Put there the 3c59x.c source module for the 3Com card
#ncftp ftp://ftp.medasys-digital-systems.fr/pub/linux/networking/drivers/3c59x.c
# Compile it
#gcc -DMODULE -D__KERNEL__ -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -O6 -c 3c59x.c `[ -f /usr/include/linux/modversions.h ] && echo -DMODVERSIONS`
# put the RedHat 5.1 floppy boot disk in the drive
# you have to copy the initrd.img file from the floppy disk
#mcopy a:initrd.img /tmp
# then uncompress it
#gzip -cd /tmp/initrd.img > /tmp/initrd.ext2
# Mount the "file" filesystem thus obtained
#mount -t ext2 /tmp/initrd.ext2 /mnt/floppy -o loop
# uncompress the modules provided
#gzip -cd /mnt/floppy/modules/modules.cgz > /tmp/modules.cpio
# extract the modules
#cd /tmp ; mkdir modules ;
cd modules ; cat /tmp/modules.cpio | cpio -i
# Copy the new updated module for the 3Com card
#cp ~/3c59x.o .
# recreate the compressed cpio file
#ls | cpio -o | gzip -c9 > ../newmodules.cgz
# replace the modules by their update
#cp ../newmodules.cgz /mnt/floppy/modules/modules.cgz
# unmount the "file" filesystem
#umount /mnt/floppy
# compress the "file" filesystem
#gzip -c9 /tmp/initrd.ext2 > /tmp/initrd.img
# copy it on the floppy disk
#mcopy /tmp/initrd.img a:
The LH4 doesn't seem to work correctly when not in Raid. Even with the latest Bios available at the time of the test (16.00), the problem remains. If you desactivate the Raid management, during the boot, the ncr53c8xx driver in Linux detects 4 controlers instead of 2 and boot doesn't end. To avoid that, you have to activate the Raid in the Bios and use each of the disk in Raid0 mode, which is quite the same as the solution without Raid at all.
These cards are equiped with an
AMI Megaraid
chipset and may support the following Raid levels :
0, 1, 3, 5, 10, 30 and 50.
Some NetRaid cards, as well as the chipset integrated on the LH3 and LH4 mother boards are supported by recent version of the Linux kernel (2.0.36/2.2.18 typically - don't use 2.0.37/38).
For the RedHat 5.2 distribution, it's not possible to install the system on this type of controler, because it's not detected by the installation program. You have to use a specific
floppy disk
. This floppy disk should be used as input to the rawrite tool, for example. It works for systems with less than 1 GB of memory.
For the RedHat 6.0 distribution, you have to manually declare the existence of this card as a supplementary SCSI adapter, in order to use it directly during the installation. The megaraid driver isn't automatically detected.
To avoid strange messages during the boot printed by the megaraid driver, it's necessary to recompile it with the option -DHP.
For the RedHat 6.1 distribution, the megaraid driver provided by the kernel does support on ly the first logical drive. In order to obtain the others, please recompile a 2.2.18 standard kernel.
You have to note that the integrated card of the LH3/4 realises a software parity checks and performs thus less efficiently than the NetRaid daughter cards. On the other side, LH3000/6000 are equiped with an integrated card doing hardware checks.
In the fourniture of the driver provided by AMI there is a Raid management tool megamgr, usable within Linux, and equivalent to the tool included in the software embedded on the controler. It's downloadable from
These cards are equiped with a StrongARM Chipset and correspond to the Adaptec card AAC-3642. A driver should be available during the 3 last monthes of year 2000.
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
bought by Linuxcare, and more precise informations on the status may be found on the
official Web site.
In particular, interesting starting points may be found on
and .
Quoting Grant Grundler (12/05/2025) : "latest update: 32-bit parisc-linux boots and mostly works on most workstations and servers. Native builds work as does networking and scsi. User space is being built for both debian (.debs) and RH (.rpms). 64-bit parisc-linux gets to a login prompt on A500 but isn't useful yet. Lots of syscalls don't work and I/O subsystem isn't stable. I expect 64-bit to be better than beta quality by the end of Q12001."
The first machines concerned by the port are the A and L Class servers. The port should be operational at the begining of 2001. Tests are also done on 712 and 715. Other people begin also to work on PA-2.0 machines. The last state of the port is always available at
.
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
.
Links to more parisc ports are at
.
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
.
More informations on this topic may be found on this page of the HP labs :
or on the reference site
HP, as a founding member of the Trilian project, worked on the port of the kernel, the initial version of gcc, gas, ld and emacs.
The HP X terminal range (Entria, Envizex) is usable with a Linux server. More over, a Linux server may be a boot server for X terminals. To do it, a certain number of operations are mandatory.
We suupose we have a HP-UX machine named hpux, on which is installed Enware, a Linux server, named linux and an X Terminal with MAC address 08:00:09:db:8d:1c. The gateway on the network is at IP address 192.168.1.254, and the DNS name server at 192.168.1.1.
Commands to do are :
hpux #cd /opt/hpxt/enware/xthome
# Enware Home Directory
hpux #tar cvf ~ftp/en.tar * .??*
# Creation of a tar archive from this software
linux #ftp hpux
Connected to hpux.
220 hpux FTP server (Version wu-2.5.0(1) Wed Aug 25 12:50:08 EDT 1999) ready.
Name (ftp:Root):ftp
331 Password required for ftp.
Password:(type your mail address here)
230-
[...]
230-
230 User ftp logged in. Access restrictions apply.
ftp>lcd /tmp
Local directory now /tmp
ftp>get en.tar
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for en.tar (57638340 bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
57638340 bytes received in [...]
ftp>quit
[...]
# Download of the tar archive
linux #mkdir -p /tftpboot
# Creation of the target directory on the linux machine
linux #cd /tftpboot
# Go there
linux #tar xvf /tmp/en.tar
# untar the archive
linux #/usr/X11R6/bin/xfs -port 7100
# Launch the X Font Server working on port 7100
linux #cat >> /etc/bootptab << EOF
global.prof:\
:sm=255.255.255.0:\
:ds=192.168.1.1:\
:gw=192.168.1.254:\
:ht=ethernet:\
:bf=bin/C3253A: # Adjust to your terminal
tx1:hd=/tftpboot:tc=global.prof:ha=080009db8d1c:ip=192.168.1.100:
EOF
# Creation of the bootpd configuration file
linux #rpm -Uvh bootp-2.4.3-7.i386.rpm
# Install bootpd say from
# Verify the existence of such a line in /etc/inetd.conf, and restart if needed the server by killall -1 inetd
bootps dgram udp wait root /usr/sbin/tcpd bootpd
# Now enkoy your X terminal by booting it
For a more detailed description, as well as the software related to that operation, consult also the page
.
Printers may be connected directly to a machine through either a parallel port (generally), or a serial port, or even (more recently) through an USB port.
They may also be directly wired to the network, for a global access; this is done thanks to a card put in a slot of the printer, or through the connexion of the parallel port of the printer to a sharing network box.
HP provides such boxes, called JetDirect, which allow thus to share personnal printers on the network, directly, without going through a machine.
They exist for various network topologies (10 BT, 10/100 BT, Localtalk, 10B2) and offer the ability to access to the printer directly from machine which like Linux support the LPD protocol, by using a remote printer in the
/etc/printcap
file. The name of the queue to use is then
raw.
An example of
/etc/printcap
file allowing to access to a printer, equiped with such a box or card, named lj4000 on the network is given below :
The configuration access to the box is done either through the
WebJetAdmin
tool provided also under Linux now, or by the
telnet
command. The default address of these products is 192.0.0.192. To connect to them initially, you just have to add an IP alias on your network interface, typically by :
#ifconfig eth0:0 192.0.0.1
and a route to that network (if not automatically created) typically by :
#route add -net 192.0.0.0
The access to the equipment is thus done simply by :
#telnet 192.0.0.192
Please pay attention to have only one such equipment on the network, at the same time, or you'll have duplicate IP addresses, which always causes problems. Note that HP manageable network equipments also use the same default address.
The reading of the
IP Alias mini HOWTO
may be useful if you don't understand the previous paragraph :-).
It is of course possible to access through the network to an HP printer attached and declared directly on a Linux machine, thanks to the
lpd
service for the other Unix clients, through
SaMBa
for the clients of Microsoft systems (Win9x ou WinNTx) or through
NetAtalk
for the MacIntosh clients.
At last,
SaMBa
offers a tool, smbclient,
which allows to print from a Unix/Linux machine to a printer wired directly on a Microsoft based PC, without any need to use a JetDirect system.
All the details useful to realize this operation are described in the file example
smbprint provided with the
SaMBa
package and on the page .
Communication between a Linux machine and a printer needs also, outside a network dialog, a discussion with an exchange language between the two elements.
There are a lot of languages of that sort, such as
PCL, Postscript or HPGL.
To be able to print correctly, the tool providing the datas to print has to generate code known by the printer.
Filters exist which allow to easily transform an output in one given format to another one.
Thus the
Ghostscript
software authorizes the transformation of Postscript source in a great variety of output formats, as indicated by its invocation in the 'Available devices' part :
#gs -h
GNU Ghostscript 5.10 (2024-12-17)
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.
This represents only the output formats compiled in the program.
Other are also available.
You may find a complete list of all the printers known by this software at
.
A list of the HP printers support may be found on the following page :
.
The main tool available in Linux environment to manage scanners is
SANE
(Scanner Access Now Easy).
This software provides in particular a driver for HP scanner management:
hpbackend.
The following table provides all of the informations on the support for this hardware by Linux.
This product is a scanner, able to send the result of the digitalisation through e-mail, by sending the digitalised document as an attachement in PDF format.
It may so well be used with a Linux (or other) mail server (sendmail, postfix, ...), as well as with clients reading their messages under Linux, providing they have a tool to display PDF file such as
Acrobat Reader or xpdf.
The Digital Sender can also send images as black and white or colour TIFF files. The black and white images work fine, however, there is a problem with the colour TIFF files. These are sent in an obsolete format which is not supported by
libtiff,
which is the basis of support for the TIFF format for nearly all Linux software. This means that you cannot directly open colour TIFF images created by the Digital Sender using Linux software (e.g. The GIMP, ImageMagick).
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