Poweredge 1900 & CentOS 5

[Otso Helenius]

Hello,

I've succesfully installed CentOS 5 on a PE1900 with the OMSA from  
Dell's repository, but am left wondering why so many omconfig  
parameters can't be changed, for example:

<su> omconfig chassis fancontrol speed=quiet

returns "No Fan control feature found on this system" and setting the  
min and max warning tresholds for the fans returns "Minimun warning  
fan treshold setting unavailable on this probe". This seems like an  
artificial SW restriction: if the OMSA can read the fan speeds and the  
system actively changes them (and the fans are after all compatible  
with Intel standard PWM), there should be no restriction whatsoever  
(except for the OMSA software and BMC firmware) in changing the fan  
speeds.

Is there any way to control the Poweredge 1900 fans under Linux? I'd  
love to hear a real explanation from Dell why controlling is impossible.


  * Otso Helenius
  * Helsinki University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture