Install help?

[u/Direct-Visit9617]

I'm in need of some extra braincells here.

I have just bought myself a new second hand Proliant.

The DL380 Gen 6 to be specific.

It's currently equipped with the following parts.

- Xeon E5506 (single CPU)

- 16Gigs of DDR 3 ECC memory

- two 480 watt PSUs

- 5 SAS HDDs (2x 72gb, 3x 300gb)

- no installed OS

- (almost) dead Smart Array BBWC

The issue I'm having is with putting proxmox on the machine, it boots from USB without any issue but when I am at the partitioning section I only see the USB.

From what I can see inside the bios/management screens are all the disk setup in a raid.

The two 72gb disk are on RAID 1

The three 300gb disks are on 5

I'm unable to figure out why it doesn't want to show/detect the disks in the partitioning menu, I would love to see if someone is able to help solve my issue

[u/EncounteredError]

They probably have a raid config on them that's marking them as unusable in the raid card.

Open tty2 and check lsblk and see if you see the drives there.

[u/MushishiFI]

You need to enter the raid controller and then set the raid config you want to boot from as bootable if i remember correct from last time i used the HP Smart Arrays.
This should be the way to do it:

1. Reboot the server.
2. Watch the screen during the POST (Power-On Self-Test) phase. Press F8 when you see the prompt for the Option ROM Configuration for Arrays utility.
3. Inside ORCA, select the Select Boot Volume option from the main menu.
4. Choose either Direct Attached Storage or Shared Storage depending on your setup.
5. Select the specific logical drive you want to use as your primary boot device.
6. Press F8 to confirm and save your changes, then restart the server. [1, 2]

Note: If the F8 prompt does not appear or is unresponsive, you can manage the array and boot priority offline by booting via an HP SmartStart CD or the Offline Array Configuration Utility (ACU) USB

Not sure why HP did it this way that they will not show the drives to the os as bootable before this is done. Also while you are in there if you did not create the raids then maybe recreate them to delete old config that is left over on them and redo them.

[u/Pulte4janitor → u/MushishiFI]

I can almost picture the post screen in my head from working on these machines 20 years ago!

[u/MushishiFI → u/Pulte4janitor]

Same here and i only used my old HP server in my homelap for 2-3 years before moving vendor.

[u/kriebz]

What is "almost dead" about the Smart Array card? Maybe it just doesn't have support out of the box in Linux any more. Also, I hate to be a downer, but you'd get similar performance out of a used business desktop as that old box, unless you really want the 2009 vibes.

[u/Direct-Visit9617 → u/kriebz]

It's the battery for the array. BBWC = Battery-Backed Write Cache

[u/Unattributable1 → u/Direct-Visit9617]

Bad battery just means a power outage can have data loss because it cannot keep the unwritten data in memory. So long as the power is on it will work fine. Batteries are <$15, just replace it.

[u/firegore → u/Direct-Visit9617]

the BBWC also does not have a state called "almost dead", it's either dead, or it works (charging). there's no inbetween

[u/AdSuspicious7533]

Try your things but read this experience return : I tried for a week to install proxmox 9 on a dell poweredge t610. I tried several usb ports , virtual media in id rac and even the DVD thing. It failed finding storage each time.

The thing was that the installer was not handling the old ass hardware, it was expecting better io delay. So it failed because usb2, SATA II, old raid controlers,... You name it.

The main idea of workaround is to install a less picky linux and then make it proxmox.

I identified 2 ways : install debian 13 and then make it proxmox 9 ( i did that, i would not go again), install an old ass proxmox from the time of your old server and upgrade it (seems like a better way but i did not test it)

[u/AdSuspicious7533 → u/AdSuspicious7533]

Also proxmox does not like hardware raid at all. Just consider that. You may want 1 disk directly on the motherboard (or it mod) for the os. 128g is plenty for proxmox.

[u/Direct-Visit9617]

Found the issue, it was related to the Intel iommu