I have just received a free HP DL-385 system, it's quite a nice server with 16G of RAM, 3*SATA and 5*SAS disks.
I want to set it up to run Linux software RAID-1 with Ext4 on a pair of SATA disks for booting and ZFS RAID-Z2 on the 5*SAS disks for data storage.
The problem I have is that the boot disks were wiped, the DVD drive is broken and ILO isn't licensed for remote disk access. This combined with the fact that USB booting apparently doesn't work (it doesn't boot with my usual USB boot device) means that I have to make the SATA disks bootable before connecting them.
What vintage? I have a DL385 G2 in production use. It's a long time ago but I seem to remember that USB booting worked just fine. For some odd reason the default setting in the BIOS is that all USB ports are USB1.1 not USB2.
The fact that the HP system takes ages to boot and is really noisy means that I don't want to make dozens of attempts to get it by trial and error.
Does anyone know what the CCISS disk format is for a single disk RAID-0 (IE a JBOD)? Presumably there is some offset where I can just put an image of a regular bootable SATA disk and have it work.
I'd try this, in this order: 1. Check BIOS version and settings then try USB booting again. The boot order stuff can be tricky on those HP's. I think F9 or F12 allows an override of the boot order. 2. Get a trial key for iLO advanced. Should work and give you full features of iLO (including remote disk) for 30 days [1] 3. Plug a DVD drive into one of the sata ports, even if it had to hang over the side Failing that maybe initialise a single disk as JBOD (F8 in BIOS boot I think) then plug it into another machine and have a look at what the format looks like. Google tells me that the metadata might be 1088 sectors long, so you could try copying your data starting at sector 1088 and see what happens. I'm guessing but there may be another copy of the metadata at the end too so don't write too much. btw, ilo ssh works great for access to serial console on my dl385g2. James [1] This page has some info about it http://h30499.www3.hp.com/t5/Integrity-Servers/ILO-2-trial-license-key/td-p/... and even suggests a trial key that might work. Won't work if your server predates iLO2, and probably won't work if a trial has already been used on it. Otherwise follow the other links and register for a trial.