Hi all,

Firstly, thanks to all of you for this informative website. What a saviour! Well... almost...

I will keep this as brief as possible, but can provide any more details as required.

Intention: Install ESXi 4.1 on a baremetal system from (not on!) a USB stick

Spec: Asus P8P67-M Pro, Intel i5-2500K, 8gb RAM, Realtek 8111E NIC, Samsung 1TB Spinpoint F3

Attachments: /var/log/messages, sysboot.log, lspci and fdisk output

Story so far:
- I have created an oem.tgz which helped me get around the unsupported NIC problem. Works well, the NIC is getting an IP from DHCP and I was able to get in to enable SSH and grab the attached logs.

- The installation is good all the way to asking for the installation target - but it doesn't list my SATA hard disk - only my USB drive. (Note, SATA is set to AHCI mode in the BIOS. Disk functioning OK as I tested with an install of Win7 on Day 1).

- Based on my lspci output, I have edited the pci.ids and simple.map files (attached)

lspci -v output



so I added the following to simple.map@


(why did I choose sata_nv.o? Because in another post I saw that enabling this then module, it showed up my SATA controller in the lspci -v output. I have tested with ahci.o as well, no difference).

And the following:



was already present in the pci.id file - it matches my PCI ID.

I feel I am close to success, but after 3 days I simply cannot get ESXi to see my SATA disk.

Anybody got any ideas?

Thanks,

FlamaD

Which port of the 6 are you using on the SATA controller? It seems that with some 6 port ICH models not all ports work with the driver that ESXi supplies.

Hi,

I tested each port I individually, with Cd rom plugged in, without cd rom plugged in. I tried booting from USB and from CD. I changed mode to IDE, and Ahci and repeated all tests again. Nothing worked.
But... as a last resort, I changed the controller mode to RAID in the BIOS... and now the installer sees my disk! I couldn't believe it and still don't quite understand it.

That cost me almost 3 full days....

Cheers

Hi everybody!

I've bought a P8H67-M Pro, I would like to install ESXi in a RAID array.
I've created the array but I don't see it when I try to install 5.0 Version.

Could you help me?

Thanks!

Bruno Hiriart

The onboard controller is likely an ICH* controller which is software based. ESXi won't support software RAID arrays so the best you'll get ESXi to see is individual disks. You might try changing the controller mode to get ESXi to recognize it.

I'm having the same problem. For some reason, the HDD isn't visible anymore.

http://www.vm-help.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3877

I'll let you know when I find out.