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can anyone let me know which free linux distribution is supported on IBM X3200 M3 server?

UPDATE: The issue was with mounting 2 hard disks. So I removed one hard disk and installed Cent OS 5.6 which works fine now.

Prakash
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  • What do you mean by "supported" here? Just one that "works" or one that IBM will offer official support for? With the latter you're pretty much out of luck as IBM won't support anything without having an organization to support them. – HampusLi May 18 '11 at 12:05
  • yes, I mean the distribution that works. – Prakash May 18 '11 at 12:09

4 Answers4

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AFAICT, pretty much all of them will run on that server. It's a standard tower server with Intel CPU. I couldn't see anything in the specs that would prevent Linux from running on it.

If you are talking about getting commercial support, don't look to IBM. They will only support commercial Linux distros (Redhat and Suse). However, I am pretty sure you will be able to find a company that will offer you commercial support for any of the major distros on that hardware.

wolfgangsz
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  • I tried to install Cent OS and free version of SUSE Linux, but it doesn't install. – Prakash May 18 '11 at 12:07
  • Please elaborate. What part exactly of the installation fails? – wolfgangsz May 18 '11 at 12:08
  • I doubt it's related with drivers. – Prakash May 18 '11 at 12:11
  • Unless you answer my question I won't be able to help you. So let me repeat: what part of the installation fails? – wolfgangsz May 18 '11 at 12:20
  • while installing SUSE Linux, it says couldn't locate CD/DVD ROM – Prakash May 18 '11 at 12:24
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    There are two possible causes for this: a) you are using a really, really old version of SUSE, which doesn't have drivers for the chipset on the mobo or b) your mobo or your CD-ROM drive is knackered (I would suspect the latter, it's quite common). Try it with a different drive – wolfgangsz May 18 '11 at 12:27
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Check out http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/x/hardware/tower/x3200m3/specs.htm

Since RHEL and SuSE are supported, I can only assume that CentOS/Fedora and OpenSuSE are supported. Other than that, if it doesn't have any "weird" hardware, any sufficiently new distribution will work.

katriel
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Supported by whom? IBM won't support anything that it didn't sell you and the free vendor won't support you because they didn't sell you anything. Having said that CentOS and Scientific Linux are two distributions that faithfully adhere to RedHat's distribution.

sfried
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The supported operating systems per IBM's specifications on the x3200 M3 are:

Microsoft® Windows® Server 2008 STD, EE, R2/Microsoft Windows Server 2008 x64 STD, EE, DC/Windows Small Business Server 2008, Red Hat Linux®, SUSE Linux, VMware ESX/ESXi

If you're asking which OSes can be successfully installed even though they are not supported by IBM, that's a different question and answer.

I've had success installing Ubuntu on the following IBM systems:

  • HS20 blade
  • x335 M/T 8676
  • x345 M/T 8670
  • x3250 M/T 4190
  • x3800 M/T 8865

M/T: Machine Type

Matthew Rankin
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