Help Installing Areca HBA Driver

[DrewN]

I’m stuck trying to install the arcsas.ko driver on FreeNAS.

The driver comes with instructions, but being new to FreeNAS, and Linux, in general, I’m not sure how to get past my sticking point.

The instructions want me to add two lines to the grub.cfg. I add the lines. But not sure about the next step. I can’t save and get out of the grub.cfg.

Any help is appreciated. I’m ready to get the system fired up, and this is my roadblock.

 

[dlavigne]

You don't install drivers on FreeNAS. Is that hardware covered by arcmsr(4)?

 

[DrewN]

I’ve seen a few arcsmr(4) lists, the most recent I saw was from 2012. It isn’t on the list. It’s the ARC-1320. Other 13xx are listed, but not the 1320.

I must have misunderstood because Areca has a FreeNAS specific driver for the 1320. When I followed the instructions, FreeNAS installation sees the card and drives. It will let me install FreeNAS on the drives. But, if I install FreeNAS on a usb Drive, the drives don’t appear, which I now know is because it isn’t the on the list.

I wonder why Areca has drivers for the 1320 specific to FreeNAS if it isn’t possible.

 

[dlavigne]

In that case, you should create a feature request at bugs.freenas.org to ensure the driver is included and working correctly. Post the issue number here.

 

[DrewN]

In that case, you should create a feature request at bugs.freenas.org to ensure the driver is included and working correctly. Post the issue number here.

Thanks. I'll do that. It is very strange because I can see on the console output it recognizes the SAS controller, it shows

arcsas0: <areca ARC1328 PCIe to SAS Host Bus Adapter
but then shows
arcsas0: mailbox_dmatag bus_dmamem_alloc failure!
arcsas0: initialize failure!
device_attach: arcsas0 attach returned 6

 

[DrewN]

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/areca-1320-freenas-9-2.17638/

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/installing-driver-areca-arc-5030-controller.10477/

This is where my initial information came from, but both questions remained unsanswered. As I've been learning FreeNAS, I've seen info on both sides of the coin regarding drivers.