First some software/hardware issue: we got some sponsored (old) Compaq Servers: Compaq ProLiant 1850R mostly, with varying numbers of CPUs, RAM and disks. With some minor tweaks (well, choose Linux as operating system in the BIOS) they are working mostly fine. Except: they don't reboot or poweroff. Which sucks, when you have to actually walk to the server to restart it... I've tried a couple of variants, but no success.

So if anyone knows how to make these older ProLiant server to reboot, tell me!

Second issue: one of the machines - which are the same model, but have minor differences in board revisions of some hardware - has troubles with the timer in SMP mode. Time is running way to fast, you can no longer login, since your login will timeout as soon as the password prompt is displayed. Using the boot parameter "clock=pit notsc" helped (not sure if notsc is needed). But I'd prefer to find out why this happens, and how to make the kernel work with default parameters.