SOLVED Can't see Volume after Flashing Controller

[Nick Howard]

Ok so following on from this thread https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/couple-of-alerts.25253/#post-158054

I've attempted to flash the LSI HBA on my Supermicro board X10SL7-F AND I've followed the instructions provided. Everything looked to have gone successfully, I entered the last 9 digits of the SAS ID and it reported: "SAS Address Successfully programmed"

However upon rebooting I noticed the Alert tab flashing red and it's giving a Critical warning of volume (ZFS) state is unknown. When I go to view the disks I'm only seeing 6 out of the 10 drives. Stupidly I only clicked on afterwards that not all the disks are controlled by the SAS LSI controller. There's 6 SATA ports and 8 SAS ports on this board, I've got 6 drives connected into the SATA ports and the other 4 in the SAS ports. I'm seeing the 6 SATA controlled drives just not the 4 SAS ones. I'm not sure if running this config has caused the problem or not.

Can anyone shed any light how I get out of this please?

 

[Nick Howard]

Ok I've solved it. Basically this all came about as I'd upgraded to the 9.3 beta release and I was seeing a warning in the alerts telling me that there was a firmware mismatch from version 15 to version 16. I'd actually just upgraded to the latest release which was version 19 and obviously still causing me a mismatch. I've re-flashed it again with version 16 and everything is back as it should be and I'm now also no longer seeing the mismatch warning. Not sure exactly why the mismatch from version 16 to 19 crashes it but 14 to 15 doesn't. Anyway, it's working.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Nvm

 

[Borja Marcos]

Don't use version 20. I tried on FreeBSD and there seems to be some incompatibility, devices detached with timeouts.

Moreover, downgrading back from 20 to a previous firmware version is tricky, you need to perform a NVRAM erase.

 

[Nick Howard]

Don't use version 20. I tried on FreeBSD and there seems to be some incompatibility, devices detached with timeouts.

Moreover, downgrading back from 20 to a previous firmware version is tricky, you need to perform a NVRAM erase.

What about from 19 back to an earlier version? Everything seems ok from what I can tell.

 

[Borja Marcos]

Yes, version 19 is not a problem. It seems that with version 20 they changed the format of some data structures kept in NVRAM. Version 19 (or older ones of course) don't know how to deal with a future version :)

So, going from 20 to any < 20 needs that NVRAM to be cleared. Going from 19 to, see, 16 doesn't seem to be a problem.

 

[Nick Howard]

OK thanks.

 

[Ericloewe]

Basically, only matched drivers and firmware are tested by LSI. Everything else is strictly a YMMV situation, with a few nasty combinations that can cause trouble.

 

[Nick Howard]

I'd not really give it much thought at the time as I was told it would work fine but this has got me thinking about it a little more. Is there any downside to having drives running with two separate HBA controllers?

The first 6 drives in mine are connected to the SATA ports (Intel PCH) the first two run on SATA 3 at 6GB/sec and the other 4 on SATA 2 at 3GB/sec. I've then got my remaining 4 drives connected into the SAS connectors (LSI 2308). I'm just wondering if this could potentially cause problems further down the line?

 

[Ericloewe]

From FreeNAS' point of view, as long as both controllers are properly supported (they are), you can mix and match to your heart's delight.

In this case, you might as well fill up the LSI SAS 2308, since it supports SATA 6Gb/s (might as well use it, even if the difference is tiny) and put the rest on the Intel SATA 6Gb/s ports.

 

[Nick Howard]

And I could just move them over without it causing any config issues?

 

[Ericloewe]

And I could just move them over without it causing any config issues?

You can move them without a care. ZFS will identify pool member drives pretty much in any case other than RAID controllers.

 

[Nick Howard]

Ok I'll do that then, as you say I might as well. Thanks for the help Eric.