Support for HP Smart Array 5i?

Hi there

I've been using IPCop for a number of years and yesterday decided to
try the new 2.x version on my old HP DL360 G3, which has a scsi raid
controller Smart Array 5i I believe. It did not work, disks could not
be detected during setup.
I tried googling for a solution, but found none. I did find a post
somewhere, however, explaining that the disks were in fact detected
(kernel should be ok) but the installer has a problem with them.
Sure enough, from the IPCop console during installation, the raid disk
is visible as /dev/cciss/c0d0 as well as under
/sys/block/cciss-something so it seems that indeed the installer does
not like cciss disks, but the kernel is ok.
Using gparted or something on the installer iso, I was able to create
a partition and format the file system. Definitely looks like an
installer problem.

So, I decided to check out the source code, I found the installer and
the code where the installer looks for scsi drives and indeed, only
'sd?' devices are considered as potential scsi drives.
I've been busy modifying the code to add support for the cciss drives,
but am not sure how to proceed from here.
I did not find a 'developers guide' type of document that would help
me get up to speed, specifically :

- What Linux distribution should I be using (is recommended) to
compile the sources and build an ISO? I would prefer debian, or debian
based at least.
- Is there documentation about what dependencies are required, or a
script that apt-gets everything, or should I just fix things as I move
along?
- Is there a script that will generate a new ISO image for me, with my
modifications to the installer/setup executable?

My apologies if this is all documented somewhere, I could not find the
docs yesterday late in the evening.

Thanks for any pointers

Regards

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