LSI MegaRAID with 8TB 4kn drives problem

[Valeri Galtsev]

Dear All,

Does anybody have LSI MegaRAID (Avago, not LSI, I should have said) with
8TB 4kn drives working on the machine running FreeBSD? If yes, how did you
install system on that machine?

My problem is: when I boot from FreeBSD DVD the machine that has LSI
MegaRAID card (MegaRAID SAS 9271-8i) with 8TB 4Kn (HGST He) the boot
sequence gets stuck after launching CPUs loading USB (and discovering
keyboard/mouse). After that the machine doesn't respond to keystrokes and
keeps printing messages:

mfi0: COMMAND oxfffffe0000e56cc0 TIMEOUT AFTER 56 SECONDS

(and it keeps printing these lines with increasing numbers of seconds).
This sounds like it is getting stuck when loading mfi driver for LSI
controller. I flashed the latest firmware one cane get from AvagoTech
website for this controller. This sounds similar to the known bug in mfi
kernel module that was fixed in FreeBSD 9.1. Still, if I try to boot DVD
with latest FreeBSD 10.3, or older: 10.1, 9.3, I have this problem. If I
disconnect all drives, or connect older smaller drives with 512 byte block
size, all goes well, and I am able to boot the machine from FreeBSD
installation DVD. Also, I can boot Linux from DVD without problem with 4Kn
drives attached, but you can imagine I will not be happy to have to
install Linux instead of FreeBSD.


Does anybody have LSI MegaRAID with 8TB 4kn drives working on the machine
running FreeBSD?

Any advises what else I could try before submit bug report?

Thanks a lot for all your answers!

Valeri

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: [phone]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

[Paul Esson]

Hi Valeri,

I had similar issue with Dell PERC 730 which is OEM of LSI card and 6TB 4Kn drives. In my case I had to force the use of the MRSAS driver over MFI initially by exiting the boot sequence to loader prompt and typing:

set hw.mfi.mrsas_enable=1

Thereafter I added the line " hw.mfi.mrsas_enable=1" to /boot/loader.conf" after I had installed the OS.

Regards,

Paul Esson  |  Redstor Limited
t  [phone]  |   m  [phone]
e  ***@redstor.com
www.redstor.com




-----Original Message-----
From: Valeri Galtsev [mailto:***@kicp.uchicago.edu]
Sent: 31 May 2016 22:13
To: freebsd-***@freebsd.org
Subject: LSI MegaRAID with 8TB 4kn drives problem

Dear All,

Does anybody have LSI MegaRAID (Avago, not LSI, I should have said) with 8TB 4kn drives working on the machine running FreeBSD? If yes, how did you install system on that machine?

My problem is: when I boot from FreeBSD DVD the machine that has LSI MegaRAID card (MegaRAID SAS 9271-8i) with 8TB 4Kn (HGST He) the boot sequence gets stuck after launching CPUs loading USB (and discovering keyboard/mouse). After that the machine doesn't respond to keystrokes and keeps printing messages:

mfi0: COMMAND oxfffffe0000e56cc0 TIMEOUT AFTER 56 SECONDS

(and it keeps printing these lines with increasing numbers of seconds).
This sounds like it is getting stuck when loading mfi driver for LSI controller. I flashed the latest firmware one cane get from AvagoTech website for this controller. This sounds similar to the known bug in mfi kernel module that was fixed in FreeBSD 9.1. Still, if I try to boot DVD with latest FreeBSD 10.3, or older: 10.1, 9.3, I have this problem. If I disconnect all drives, or connect older smaller drives with 512 byte block size, all goes well, and I am able to boot the machine from FreeBSD installation DVD. Also, I can boot Linux from DVD without problem with 4Kn drives attached, but you can imagine I will not be happy to have to install Linux instead of FreeBSD.


Does anybody have LSI MegaRAID with 8TB 4kn drives working on the machine running FreeBSD?

Any advises what else I could try before submit bug report?

Thanks a lot for all your answers!

Valeri

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics University of Chicago
Phone: [phone]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

[Valeri Galtsev]

On Wed, June 1, 2016 8:14 am, Paul Esson wrote:
> Hi Valeri,
>
> I had similar issue with Dell PERC 730 which is OEM of LSI card and 6TB
> 4Kn drives. In my case I had to force the use of the MRSAS driver over
> MFI initially by exiting the boot sequence to loader prompt and typing:
>
> set hw.mfi.mrsas_enable=1
>
> Thereafter I added the line " hw.mfi.mrsas_enable=1" to /boot/loader.conf"
> after I had installed the OS.

Thanks, Paul! Brilliant! Works like a charm.

I'm ashamed I didn't even think to look around if there is different
driver... (which we often did long-long ago ;-(

Valeri

>
> Regards,
>
> Paul Esson  |  Redstor Limited
> t  [phone]  |   m  [phone]
> e  ***@redstor.com
> www.redstor.com
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Valeri Galtsev [mailto:***@kicp.uchicago.edu]
> Sent: 31 May 2016 22:13
> To: freebsd-***@freebsd.org
> Subject: LSI MegaRAID with 8TB 4kn drives problem
>
> Dear All,
>
> Does anybody have LSI MegaRAID (Avago, not LSI, I should have said) with
> 8TB 4kn drives working on the machine running FreeBSD? If yes, how did you
> install system on that machine?
>
> My problem is: when I boot from FreeBSD DVD the machine that has LSI
> MegaRAID card (MegaRAID SAS 9271-8i) with 8TB 4Kn (HGST He) the boot
> sequence gets stuck after launching CPUs loading USB (and discovering
> keyboard/mouse). After that the machine doesn't respond to keystrokes and
> keeps printing messages:
>
> mfi0: COMMAND oxfffffe0000e56cc0 TIMEOUT AFTER 56 SECONDS
>
> (and it keeps printing these lines with increasing numbers of seconds).
> This sounds like it is getting stuck when loading mfi driver for LSI
> controller. I flashed the latest firmware one cane get from AvagoTech
> website for this controller. This sounds similar to the known bug in mfi
> kernel module that was fixed in FreeBSD 9.1. Still, if I try to boot DVD
> with latest FreeBSD 10.3, or older: 10.1, 9.3, I have this problem. If I
> disconnect all drives, or connect older smaller drives with 512 byte block
> size, all goes well, and I am able to boot the machine from FreeBSD
> installation DVD. Also, I can boot Linux from DVD without problem with 4Kn
> drives attached, but you can imagine I will not be happy to have to
> install Linux instead of FreeBSD.
>
>
> Does anybody have LSI MegaRAID with 8TB 4kn drives working on the machine
> running FreeBSD?
>
> Any advises what else I could try before submit bug report?
>
> Thanks a lot for all your answers!
>
> Valeri
>
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> Valeri Galtsev
> Sr System Administrator
> Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kavli Institute for Cosmological
> Physics University of Chicago
> Phone: [phone]
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-***@freebsd.org mailing list
> https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to
> "freebsd-questions-***@freebsd.org"
>


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: [phone]
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++