Rockstor 3.8.14 installation on RAID volume on HP Proliant Microserver gen8

Installation
1

Hello all,

I just bought a little shiny HP Proliant Microserver gen8 G1610T and I am trying to install Rockstor 3.8.14 with no success until now.
I have installed a SSD drive in the DVD bay. No other disks installed.
I enabled RAID support from BIOS. I created a RAID0 logical volume with the SSD drive.
I used the Virtual Drive feature from iLO Remote Console menu and mounted the Rockstor ISO file.
Basically I followed the instructions from this blog :

I also used the Virtual Drive for loading the DD file.

The problem:
After typing “linux modprobe.blacklist=ahci inst.dd” , the installer just continues to boot and not asking me anything about the driver (like in the tutorial) and after Anaconda is loaded, I cannot see any RAID volume.

Important to mention: the procedure described in the tutorial works perfectly with a CentOS 7 ISO. It loads the driver and I can see the RAID volume.

Please help me troubleshoot this, or maybe another procedure to install Rockstor on a RAID volume, because I would really like to use it.

Thank you,
Imperiatux

2

Assuming you never used / know specifics of btrfs.

Reason might be that Linux can see through your raid controller and still see your disk as normal ? : )

Anyway what I would suggest, disable all raid funky features ( you have a btrfs to do that :smiley: )

[to all haters, moderate cost hardware raid 5 & 6 also have a write hole and no crc for parity so f of].

1 Like
3

Yes, disable RAID, Rockstor manages your disk array instead. If installing on SSD in HP Microserver’s optical bay, change storage controller to SATA legacy in BIOS. Won’t boot from the 5th SATA port (the optical bay) when the controller is in AHCI mode.

I assume you’re following the guide here. I found the usb won’t boot unless it was plugged into MicroServer’s USB2 port (not USB3).

1 Like
4

Hey, I’m setting up a HP microserver ML90 (a backup server)… any advices ?

5

Thank you for the advices.
I tried a number of solutions.
The closest one with RAID support was to manually extract the RPM from the DD file with cpio tool, and then on Rockstor boot I copied the files from RPM into the loaded system.
What I did:

  1. When Rockstor welcome screen appears, press TAB and add “modprobe.blacklist=ahci” at the end of “vmlinuz …” line
  2. Wait for the kernel to load.
  3. Wait for the setup screen to appear.
  4. Connect the USB containing the extracted folders from RPM file
  5. Press CTRL+ALT+F2
  6. fdisk -l --> find the USB device /dev/sdX
  7. mkdir /media/
  8. mount /dev/sdX /media/
  9. cp -r /media/etc/* /etc/
  10. cp -r /media/lib/modules/3.10.0*/extra/hpvsa/ /lib/modules/3.10.0*/extra/
  11. depmod -a
  12. modprobe kpvsa
  13. fdisk -l --> check if the RAID logical volume is properly found
  14. ps -ef | grep tmux
  15. Kill the process : /usr/bin/tmux -u -f /usr/share/anaconda/tmux.conf start
  16. The Anaconda Installer should re-initiate and the RAID volume should be there.

The installation successfully finishes, after reboot GRUB is loaded but on Linux startup, it hangs at dracut and I could have the dracut shell.
Any ideas to further troubleshoot this is highly appreciated.

Though, I managed to install Rockstor on SSD (in AHCI mode) with bootloader installed on the internal SD card. I did not change anything in BIOS, RAID support being active.

Regards,
Imperiatux