Debain Branch Drivers for Dynamic Smart Array RAID Controllers- B series Embedded Controllers

[MAFoElffen]

HP Certified the ML310 G8 server on Debian and Ubuntu 12.04LTS. But there was techinical exceptions to those certifications:

ML310e Gen8
Ubuntu 12.04.1
HP Dynamic Smart Array B110i/B120i/B320i
The controller driver for Ubuntu 12.04 is not available. The Ubuntu 12.04 certification was completed in SATA mode.

Reference these 2 posts here:

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/ProLiant-Servers-ML-DL-SL/DL120-G6-Embedded-SATA-RAID-Debian-driver/m-p/4715655/highlight/true#M107253

http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Community-Regional-Operating/ProLiant-DL360-G6-64-bit-Ubuntu/m-p/4583304/highlight/true#M11

Which are a little misleading. Ubuntu 12.04 Server x86_amd64 will run on it. It see's the drives as separate without RAID, using kmod hpsa.so, instead of the hpvsa.so. It would need hpvsa.so to see the RAID capabilities of that controller.

Those posts lead on that hpvsa.so is only available as a binary to Red Hat or Suses. After some research on HP, I find direct drivers to redhat, suse, solaris, VNWare ESXi, VMSphere... with porting to Fedora, OPensuse, etc.

Someone here said that that drivers are avaiable as binaries. Sort of. They are finshed binary "kernel modules" already compiled for certain kernel versions (some versions including Xen).

Further research led me the the HP Software repo's where there are branches there to Debain and Ubuntu, where the RAID Mangement and Monitoring software is available for those branches... but those seem a little useless without specific RAID drivers available for those branches... or am I wrong with that?

Here's my challenge- I support Ubuntu Servers (among other general UNIX and Linux modules and layers). I have a Systems Admin that I am trying to support that has the above hardware... And his Boos wants Ubuntu Server for their app's and requirements. They bought that server because it was "Ubuntu Certified."

I can port binaries to debain packages... but the hpvsa.so in packages that I can find so far are only up to Linux-kernel-3.0.17-0.27, which would be mid-stream of Ubuntu version 11.10. Current LTS is 12.04LTS and that is Linux-kernel-3.2.x.

Someone mentioned that if another could find out if this was made by some such as Adaptec, then the posibitlty of using a driver from them... but no-one seesm to "really" know. I don't see emntion of that anywhere for sure.

I have an idea. What if "I" facilitate the porting of that module to the Debian branch? Proprietary kernel modules can be facilatated by compiling with a closed source binary to compile to a kernel version. That is how nVidia GPU drivers are compiled. Licensing, trade secrets and user acceptance is honored and protected. That would improved how these drivers are made available for the other Linux distro's and aid in the speed they are made avaiable for those distro's. I can even add in an accep license script into the package install scripting, with their liceses terms.

I was originally thinking to suggest adding to a Debian non-free type PPA where the import and build are secure and never seen, but since HP has their own private software delivery repo/portal and their own checks for keys and keyrings, it could go directly their and not leave their own "direct" control.

I don't know the full licensing or security issues involved that they are keeping such a tight lid on that. I do know that that controller has many technological features that are locked into it and unlocked through there own incremental keys, , so protected. I just that it would bring in business to them if it were "avaiable." I'm just trying to facilatate solutions.

And I don't know who to contact directly to get that resolved.