Hello!
I have an older server HP ML350 G6 which has P410i RAID controller. As it is known the controller officially does not support HBA mode, but for Linux there is a kernel patch which under specific circumstances (correct FW version & enabled "hidden" HBA mode) allows system to recognize disks without the need to do RAID0 on each disk in controller settings.
My current setup consists of 4x 300 GB SAS disks with RAID0 config for each disk and on top of that I run Proxmox with ZFS. Since it's experimental/project machine I would like to reinstall Proxmox with built-in (with patches) support for HBA mode after I enable hidden HBA mode (I already have correct FW version). The kernel patch can be applied via DKMS, but until the possibility to do that, I must already have the OS installed. I know I could add another disk via SATA port on motherboard to install OS to it and add "HBA" support with DKMS later, but I don't intend to do that, as it is just a workaround and I would not gain any experience with this.
The first thing I checked out is how to change the contents of ISO to change kernel and I also successfully compiled 5.11 kernel with patches applied. My understanding of kernel/initrd/squashfs related stuff is pretty limited, so currently have hard times to figure out how to apply that kernel to the ISO contents, so that in live session my disks (when HBA mode is enabled) will be visible. I found this page https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Modify/CustomKernel, but it's pretty outdated to my understanding and as I see, it may be impossible to change kernel without rebuilding complete ISO. As I read in some other forum topic (can't find it at the moment) Proxmox does not have publicly available ISO building tools.
I'm still looking for solutions to this problem and can't find anything that would get me some progress at this stage. I would really appreciate any tip that would led me to the right direction or any other useful information regarding that topic.
Thank you!
I have an older server HP ML350 G6 which has P410i RAID controller. As it is known the controller officially does not support HBA mode, but for Linux there is a kernel patch which under specific circumstances (correct FW version & enabled "hidden" HBA mode) allows system to recognize disks without the need to do RAID0 on each disk in controller settings.
My current setup consists of 4x 300 GB SAS disks with RAID0 config for each disk and on top of that I run Proxmox with ZFS. Since it's experimental/project machine I would like to reinstall Proxmox with built-in (with patches) support for HBA mode after I enable hidden HBA mode (I already have correct FW version). The kernel patch can be applied via DKMS, but until the possibility to do that, I must already have the OS installed. I know I could add another disk via SATA port on motherboard to install OS to it and add "HBA" support with DKMS later, but I don't intend to do that, as it is just a workaround and I would not gain any experience with this.
The first thing I checked out is how to change the contents of ISO to change kernel and I also successfully compiled 5.11 kernel with patches applied. My understanding of kernel/initrd/squashfs related stuff is pretty limited, so currently have hard times to figure out how to apply that kernel to the ISO contents, so that in live session my disks (when HBA mode is enabled) will be visible. I found this page https://wiki.debian.org/DebianInstaller/Modify/CustomKernel, but it's pretty outdated to my understanding and as I see, it may be impossible to change kernel without rebuilding complete ISO. As I read in some other forum topic (can't find it at the moment) Proxmox does not have publicly available ISO building tools.
I'm still looking for solutions to this problem and can't find anything that would get me some progress at this stage. I would really appreciate any tip that would led me to the right direction or any other useful information regarding that topic.
Thank you!
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