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    Home - man page - HPSA

    HPSA

    WillieBy WillieMarch 18, 2026Updated:March 18, 2026No Comments4 Mins Read
     

    NAME

    hpsa – HP Smart Array SCSI driver  

    SYNOPSIS

    modprobe hpsa [ hpsa_allow_any=1 ]
    
     

    DESCRIPTION

    hpsa is a SCSI driver for HP Smart Array RAID controllers.  

    Options

    hpsa_allow_any=1: This option allows the driver to attempt to operate on any HP Smart Array hardware RAID controller, even if it is not explicitly known to the driver. This allows newer hardware to work with older drivers. Typically this is used to allow installation of operating systems from media that predates the RAID controller, though it may also be used to enable hpsa to drive older controllers that would normally be handled by the cciss(4) driver. These older boards have not been tested and are not supported with hpsa, and cciss(4) should still be used for these.  

    Supported hardware

    The hpsa driver supports the following Smart Array boards:
    
        Smart Array P700M
        Smart Array P212
        Smart Array P410
        Smart Array P410i
        Smart Array P411
        Smart Array P812
        Smart Array P712m
        Smart Array P711m
        StorageWorks P1210m
    
     

    Configuration details

    To configure HP Smart Array controllers, use the HP Array Configuration Utility (either hpacuxe(8) or hpacucli(8)) or the Offline ROM-based Configuration Utility (ORCA) run from the Smart Array’s option ROM at boot time.  

    FILES

     

    Device nodes

    Logical drives are accessed via the SCSI disk driver (sd(4)), tape drives via the SCSI tape driver (st(4)), and the RAID controller via the SCSI generic driver (sg(4)), with device nodes named /dev/sd*, /dev/st*, and /dev/sg*, respectively.  

    HPSA-specific host attribute files in /sys

    /sys/class/scsi_host/host*/rescan
    This is a write-only attribute. Writing to this attribute will cause the driver to scan for new, changed, or removed devices (e.g,. hot-plugged tape drives, or newly configured or deleted logical drives, etc.) and notify the SCSI midlayer of any changes detected. Normally a rescan is triggered automatically by HP’s Array Configuration Utility (either the GUI or the command-line variety); thus, for logical drive changes, the user should not normally have to use this attribute. This attribute may be useful when hot plugging devices like tape drives, or entire storage boxes containing preconfigured logical drives.
    /sys/class/scsi_host/host*/firmware_revision
    This attribute contains the firmware version of the Smart Array.

    For example:

        # cd /sys/class/scsi_host/host4
        # cat firmware_revision
        7.14
    
     

    HPSA-specific disk attribute files in /sys

    /sys/class/scsi_disk/c:b:t:l/device/unique_id
    This attribute contains a 32 hex-digit unique ID for each logical drive.
    
    For example:
    
        # cd /sys/class/scsi_disk/4:0:0:0/device
        # cat unique_id
        600508B1001044395355323037570F77
    
    /sys/class/scsi_disk/c:b:t:l/device/raid_level
    This attribute contains the RAID level of each logical drive.
    
    For example:
    
        # cd /sys/class/scsi_disk/4:0:0:0/device
        # cat raid_level
        RAID 0
    
    /sys/class/scsi_disk/c:b:t:l/device/lunid
    This attribute contains the 16 hex-digit (8 byte) LUN ID by which a logical drive or physical device can be addressed. c:b:t:l are the controller, bus, target, and lun of the device.
    
    For example:
    
        # cd /sys/class/scsi_disk/4:0:0:0/device
        # cat lunid
        0x0000004000000000
    
     

    Supported ioctl() operations

    For compatibility with applications written for the cciss(4) driver, many, but not all of the ioctls supported by the cciss(4) driver are also supported by the hpsa driver. The data structures used by these ioctls are described in the Linux kernel source file include/linux/cciss_ioctl.h.
    CCISS_DEREGDISK, CCISS_REGNEWDISK, CCISS_REGNEWD
    These three ioctls all do exactly the same thing, which is to cause the driver to rescan for new devices. This does exactly the same thing as writing to the hpsa-specific host "rescan" attribute.
    CCISS_GETPCIINFO
    Returns PCI domain, bus, device and function and "board ID" (PCI subsystem ID).
    CCISS_GETDRIVVER
    Returns driver version in three bytes encoded as:


        (major_version << 16) | (minor_version << 8) |
            (subminor_version)

    CCISS_PASSTHRU, CCISS_BIG_PASSTHRU
    Allows "BMIC" and "CISS" commands to be passed through to the Smart Array. These are used extensively by the HP Array Configuration Utility, SNMP storage agents, and so on. See cciss_vol_status at for some examples.
     

    COLOPHON

    This page is part of release 3.74 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of this page, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

    Willie
    • Website

    Willie has over 15 years of experience in Linux system administration and DevOps. After managing infrastructure for startups and enterprises alike, he founded Command Linux to share the practical knowledge he wished he had when starting out. He oversees content strategy and contributes guides on server management, automation, and security.

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