SOLVED Can't boot from USB with new HBA.

[Mack Hankins]

So I'm migrating an old NAS to new hardware. It's a Supermicro CSE-847 with a JBOD attached. What we've changed are the drives and controllers. Also, I feel it's relevant to mention that the motherboard is a X8DTE-F. The only other card installed is a dual 1gb intel NIC.

Old Hardware
2x Adaptec 6405
1x Adaptect 6445
Hitachi 1GB Sata 3.0 3Gb/s 7200 RPM

New Hardware
LSI 9207-8i HBA
LSI 9207-8e HBA
Seagate NAS HDD ST2000VN000

The problem is when I plug any of the SAS cables into the HBAs the system will not boot to the usb. I have legacy usb enabled and I've tried almost every combination of plugging in sets of drives. (e.g only the front plane or just the jbod etc). If there are no drives plugged into the HBA it will boot fine. The old usb was running 8.0x something and the new usb is the latest 9.3. Can you give me any suggestions as to what to try next?

 

[BigDave]

This is not an issue with the FreeNAS OS, but is a motherboard issue.
There will be very few (if any) users of that board here in the forums,
my suggestion is seek help in the Supermicro FAQ or forums.
@Darren Myers had one of these boards back in 2014, maybe he'll pop in...

 

[Mack Hankins]

I've taken you advice and contacted supermicro. I also updated the bios firmware with no change. I'll post back if I can get it solved.

 

[gpsguy]

With 9.3, one can use larger disks and use the extra space for multiple boot environments. You might want to consider using a small SSD to boot from. Sure, it'll use a SATA connection, but updating FreeNAS will be quicker. You didn't mention how many drives you have, but given that it sounds like it's for a business, I'd definitely be looking at a SSD over a USB flash drive.

 

[Darren Myers]

I have this board, 2 of them actually. 1 in my SAN has 3 M1015's and a 10Gb card...no issues what so ever, i did however update both the BIOS's to the latest. The backplanes that 36 bay uses, is it possible to connect to only 1 of the 2 backplanes at a time to see if one is having an issue? What slots are you utilizing? have you tried setting the BIOS back to full defaults? Do those LSI cards need to be in IT mode to function, i have a feeling they should function no matter what. How many SAS cables have you been trying to connect to each backplane/HBA? Have you tested the cards individually to make sure they do function?

EDIT: I also might consider not using a USB and rather try to internally boot from a SATA device directly attached to the board. I use x2 80Gb intel SSD's for boot that are connected to internal SATA 1 and 2

 

[Mack Hankins]

It's total of 77 drives across the full 8U. I'm gonna try it on a sata tomorrow. This is our secondary backup and it doesn't have a SSD. The cables is the one thing I didn't change, but I did try plugging up planes at a time. The smallest set being 9 drives. Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[Darren Myers]

Mhmmm.....what could i do with 77 hdds....sounds like @pclausen :P yea i think i'd give it a go, if of course you have the free time. and i didnt say you *have* to use a SSD to boot, hell if you got a spare laptop hdd id throw that in there to see if you can get it booted and running. It might take some tinkering to ensure both HBA's are 100% functional and all.

 

[Mack Hankins]

Supermicro support suggested disabling the OPROM for the HBA PCI-E slots in the bios and that worked. Beforehand, I had installed it on a sata drive which also worked.

Thanks.

 

[Ericloewe]

Supermicro support suggested disabling the OPROM for the HBA PCI-E slots in the bios and that worked. Beforehand, I had installed it on a sata drive which also worked.

Thanks.

I've heard of the BIOS extension ROMs from several LSI SAS adapters interfering with each other, but somehow blocking USB boot? That's a new one.

Well, you won't miss them. Next time you flash the cards, feel free to not flash the BIOS extension ROM.

 

[Xlot]

Supermicro support suggested disabling the OPROM for the HBA PCI-E slots in the bios and that worked. Beforehand, I had installed it on a sata drive which also worked.

Thanks.

Ran into this same problem - install of FreeNAS11 worked just fine, but then after reboot was getting an error saying no boot device found.

Disconnecting all the drives from the HBA would get the machine to boot into freenas, and I could reconnect them via hot-swap bay and they were working fine, but booting just wasn't happening.

I removed the BIOS from the LSI card and it happily boots freenas now (boot times down a bit too), and volumes created and working.