I wouldn't worry about pci.ids as it only impacts the dislay name in the VI client and at the console. If simple.map is corrected, you can then use lspci -p to check if the driver has loaded correctly for the controller. If no module is listed, then it might take an updated drive for this to work.

yes, the sata_nv.o module is loaded.

The only problem now is, that i can't see the attached harddisks.

Yup,

I can also see that the module sata_nv.o is loaded, but as griswold explains no drives are found.

Hi everyone,

Sorry to hijack this topic. I do not intend to offend anyone, just seems that the previous posts could lead me to a happy end (feel free to (re)move it.)

Just to start, I must say thank you Dave.Mishchenko (I think is the owner) and all the community for this huge Knowledge Base about ESXi.
I have been reading this site tips 'n' trick's and forum for some days now, but I'm still struggling with, which I think are some minor issues...

I'm trying to get ESXi 4 installed in a system which is composed for an ASUS M4N78 motherboard and SATA HD.
As far as I know, this mobo shares almost the same chipset (at least SATA i think) of the M3N78-XXX mobo.

My objective is to get ESXi 4 installed from a USB flash drive. I think this is the best way when we need to get hardware working with trial and error. (don't need to burn hundred's of cd's)

I followed the instructions to get an USB bootable ESX installation flash (syslinux + uncompressing the iso to the USB flash (used 7-zip)), which worked flawlessly at the first try.

My first question is: To use any OEM.TGZ already availlable with my USB drive, I just need to put it in the root of it or do I have to change anything to "tell" the installation process to use it?

Second: Booting from the original CD (without any modification), the installer complaints about not having any storage available to continue the installation process (I have 1 SATA 500GB HD). At this point I managed to get the console and run lspci -l. This, returned the following (very simplified):



That SATA Controller Mass Storage changes the last portion when I change SATA mode on bios (SATA, AHCI, RAID).
Once it recognizes Sata Controller Mass Storage but it complaints about the lacking of storage to install the hypervisor, do I realy need an oem.tgz or simple.map or pci.ids?

I know this is a huge question for a topic that even isn't mine. Once more, sorry for that, and thanks for any help.

Regards,

Luis

Luis,

I for one would be very glad to help you and follow your progress. I also have a M4N78-E and I have everything working on it except for ESXi 3.5 being able to recognize either my IDE or Sata (I've got both of them installed) DVD-RW drives.

I had to go to twin Intel 1000/GT NICS and, as of yesterday with the delivery of my new HP Procurve switch, have them teamed in a LACP teamed NIC environment. ESXi 3.5 teamed both nics and they are running very nicely balanced.

I've been holding off on ESXi 4 because 3Ware has not released the ver 4 drivers for the Raid controller yet.

I can pretty much tell you that you won't have any luck getting ESX anything to recognize any of the drives on the onboard sata on that mother board. I have not found that any of the included or OEM drivers will work with it either. That's why I invested in the 3Ware disk controller.

Hi Bookworm,

Thank's for your reply.

From what you are saying, It's useless for me trying to get any kind of storage to work with this motherboard?
Have you already tried everything possible? Sorry for the question, but as I already saw some posts here and there reporting some kind of success (in sata mode, ahci, or wahtever...)

Thanks for your input

Yes I have. I've tried every combination of IDE/SATA/AHCI in the bios settings. Moved the drives to every sata port on the motherboard. Tried Sata HD's and CD-Roms in each of the configuration.

I've been able to get ESXi to recognize the controller under AHCI but it won't recognize the drives. I'll post my LSPCI output when I get home.

It will even assign a VMHBA01 and 02 enumerator to the CD-ROM's and drives but no I cannot get any driver to load for the either one of them. It shows them in the -p output assigned but no driver is listed. I've manually gone down the list by hand and vmk_loadmod'ed just every .o in the directory! Nothing.

I know they work because you can boot from them and I have a small 40 gig startup partition on the 3Ware raid that I can remove the memory stick and it will boot straight from the Raid. I have WinXP and Ubuntu with the grub loader. If I boot a native operating system both Windows and Linux recognize the drives and cd-roms and all sata ports right away.

I'm going from memory here but the best case I've been able to come up with is:

1002:4390 storage ata_piix
1002:4391 storage achi
1002:439c storage ide

All works until you get to the 439c. It loads the IDE driver during boot (you can see it) but it won't assig it to the 439c controller.

George

Hi George,

Thanks for your reply.
Humm, It seems that I don't need to go through all of that...
I will keep an eye on this expecting that someone can get this to work with built-in SATA.

For now I think I need some add-on card to make it work.

Thank you for all the info.

Regards,

Luís

Don't worry, I don't give up easy. I go downstairs every couple days and try something else.

But if you want a jumpstart, I'd invest in a good supported Raid card and an Intel 1000/pro GT

Hi George,

Thanks for the input.
No I do not give up so easily I am very persistent with this kind of things...

Probably I'll just do what you're saying and get a compatible sata controller, just to get it working. But, I'll keep looking for a way to do it with the onboard controller.

Thanks!