ATTO ExpressSAS R680 SAS/SATA RAID controllers

[Rviana]

Hello there my first post here. Due to win10 EOL announcement, i turned to Rocky Linux to keep my HP Z840 a viable machine for VFX work.
I’m not an experienced Linux user, so i bumped into a few issues. Eventually after a lot of googling and the help of a few posts here, i got everything running (Davinci Resolve, Fusion Studio and Blender, Nvidia Drivers) on Rocky 9.4. EXCEPT my External RAID GSPEEDs that are plugged through a ATTO ExpressSAS R680 RAID Controller. I know its an old card, but very reliable on windows. On ATTO website there is no linux driver available, and the only advice they give is to buy a more recent card.
I went through the ELREPO route as suggested here but no luck, at least for this specific vendor:model
03:00.0 RAID bus controller [0104]: ATTO Technology, Inc. ExpressSAS 6Gb SAS/SATA RAID Adapter [117c:0049] (rev b2)

I then found on github this https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/scsi/esas2r/Kconfig

That as stated seems to be what i need.
But i’m not a programmer so i have no idea how to compile/install this .

Can anyone help please? much appreciated.
Thank you!
best
Ric

[toracat]

You may want to try installing ELRepo’s kernel-lt or kernel-ml. The referenced driver is enabled in either kernel.

[Rviana]

Thanks @toracat .
Did as you suggested, but my ignorance might have come in the way. There was a windows drive in the same machine and it complained about that. I removed the drive and now i can´t boot Rocky.
I unplugged the RAID, and have gone through rescue but nothing can get me past the
– mpt2sas_cm0: Overriding NVDATA EEDPTagNode setting.

I even blacklisted the mpt2sas with modprobe as Chatgpt suggested but no luck.
When i run through rescue mode it kernel panics on me.

any suggestions?
thanks

[Rviana]

Did now a complete clean reinstall of Rocky 9.4, and as soon as i install kernel 6.10 it doesn’t boot no more. I can get it in running in the default kernel now though.

[toracat]

I cannot reproduce your issue. I just installed the latest kernel-ml on a Rocky 9.4 system. It booted fine.

$ cat /etc/redhat-release 
Rocky Linux release 9.4 (Blue Onyx)
$ uname -a
Linux rocky9 6.10.5-1.el9.elrepo.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Wed Aug 14 14:26:41 EDT 2024 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Do you see any errors or hints in dmesg or in /var/log/messages ?

[Rviana]

Now not even default kernel boots.
Here is the screen messages stuck on boot:

[Rviana]

I can see a few red lines but they’re related to the default kernel. How can i see the log from the 6.10 Kernel boot?

[toracat]

I’m beginning to suspect this is hardware-related such as bad RAM.

With only the distro kernel installed, is everything working fine?

[Rviana]

With both installed , but booting on 5.14 works fine except for the lack of the RAID card drivers.

[toracat]

OK, in that case we (ELRepo) can try building a kmod package for your device. That should work with the distro kernel.

[tqhoang]

@Rviana
We have published the following kmod driver for your hardware. Please let us know if it works ok.
https://elrepo.org/linux/elrepo/el9/x86_64/RPMS/kmod-esas2r-1.00-1.el9_4.elrepo.x86_64.rpm

Additionally we have a driver update disc for installs using it as a boot drive.
https://elrepo.org/linux/dud/el9/x86_64/dd-esas2r-1.00-1.el9_4.elrepo.iso

[Rviana]

YES!!! Thank you so much! Works like a charm!
You guys Rock!!

[tqhoang]

Great to hear! I updated my post above to include the driver update disc (DUD) if you ever need it.