"-d" is an invalid extra smart option | Bug report marked as "Not to Be Fixed"

[bjlanger]

Hey so I submitted a bug report about this a while back. It got closed right away and marked as "Not to be Fixed". What gives? It's for a simple issue. All I need to do is use the "-d" or "--device=" option to get SMART data from my drives. Is there some unspoken rule that the devs are just not allowing HBAs to be used? Are we supposed to directly connect all our drives somehow?

I'd like some extra info because this is quite annoying.

 

[bjlanger]

The report in question: https://ixsystems.atlassian.net/browse/NAS-121864

 

[jgreco]

devs are just not allowing HBAs to be used? Are we supposed to directly connect all our drives somehow?

You seem a little confused. You are supposed to use an LSI HBA. Or an Intel PCH SCU, or an Intel SATA AHCI controller. And yes, drives are supposed to be directly connected. You can connect up to about a thousand drives using an LSI 12Gbps HBA.

In most cases I've seen, people trying to use the -d flag seem to be trying to use some off-brand RAID controller. This is not supported and efforts to support crappy RAID controllers in the past have ended up with lost pools and the blame game. To be clear, even if the manual and hardware compatibility doesn't make it clear, you should follow the guidance in

What's all the noise about HBAs, and why can't I use a RAID controller?

1) An HBA is a Host Bus Adapter. This is a controller that allows SAS and SATA devices to be attached to, and communicate directly with, a server. RAID controllers typically aggregate several disks into a Virtual Disk abstraction of some sort...

www.truenas.com

This is fully supported.

 

[jgreco]

Oh JFC you're using CCISS? That is ABSOLUTELY a TERRIBLE IDEA, cease and desist, do NOT use, and no they do not want to support that.

 

[bjlanger]

You seem a little confused. You are supposed to use an LSI HBA. Or an Intel PCH SCU, or an Intel SATA AHCI controller. And yes, drives are supposed to be directly connected. You can connect up to about a thousand drives using an LSI 12Gbps HBA.

In most cases I've seen, people trying to use the -d flag seem to be trying to use some off-brand RAID controller. This is not supported and efforts to support crappy RAID controllers in the past have ended up with lost pools and the blame game. To be clear, even if the manual and hardware compatibility doesn't make it clear, you should follow the guidance in

What's all the noise about HBAs, and why can't I use a RAID controller?

1) An HBA is a Host Bus Adapter. This is a controller that allows SAS and SATA devices to be attached to, and communicate directly with, a server. RAID controllers typically aggregate several disks into a Virtual Disk abstraction of some sort...

www.truenas.com

This is fully supported.

The card I'm using is an HPE H240... hardly a crappy controller. It's in HBA mode so it should be passing the drive directly through. However, issuing sata smart commands doesn't seem to work. It used to so maybe I set something wrong in the controller.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

The card I'm using is an HPE H240... hardly a crappy controller.

If it uses the ciss(4) driver in FreeBSD, it's not going to work regardless of its reputation with other operating systems. Consider it unsupported.

 

[jgreco]

hardly a crappy controller.

I have to agree, I also wouldn't use one to flush my toilet. Sorry, this is unusable. Many different bullet points under the HBA/RAID resource apply here. CCISS is an early 2000's Compaq abomination to create a standard for RAID controllers and for reasons unknown it is still hanging on all these years later. I suppose it has something with PMC Sierra not wanting to invest in driver development. CISS driver is basically a RAID card driver and the H240 is already well known not to work well with TrueNAS. Can you maybe get it to work for a little while? Yes, probably, it might work until something goes wrong. Then it is all sorts of bad news.

See points 2), 4), 4a), 5), and 10) of

What's all the noise about HBAs, and why can't I use a RAID controller?

1) An HBA is a Host Bus Adapter. This is a controller that allows SAS and SATA devices to be attached to, and communicate directly with, a server. RAID controllers typically aggregate several disks into a Virtual Disk abstraction of some sort...

www.truenas.com

 

[jgreco]

ciss(4) driver in FreeBSD

Or Linux. The same RAID card type driver issues doom it for use with ZFS; it's not a FreeBSD thing. You really want the low level interaction with the drives to be handled correctly.

 

[bjlanger]

I have to agree, I also wouldn't use one to flush my toilet. Sorry, this is unusable. Many different bullet points under the HBA/RAID resource apply here. CCISS is an early 2000's Compaq abomination to create a standard for RAID controllers and for reasons unknown it is still hanging on all these years later. I suppose it has something with PMC Sierra not wanting to invest in driver development. CISS driver is basically a RAID card driver and the H240 is already well known not to work well with TrueNAS. Can you maybe get it to work for a little while? Yes, probably, it might work until something goes wrong. Then it is all sorts of bad news.

See points 2), 4), 4a), 5), and 10) of

What's all the noise about HBAs, and why can't I use a RAID controller?

1) An HBA is a Host Bus Adapter. This is a controller that allows SAS and SATA devices to be attached to, and communicate directly with, a server. RAID controllers typically aggregate several disks into a Virtual Disk abstraction of some sort...

www.truenas.com

Fair enough, got an LSI SAS3008 on the way now, guess I should've read that HBA post originally, although, I threw together this setup before it was written, granted I could've done more reading up on the H240. Glad my array has somehow survived since then haha, it's been spinning for 4 years now on that card.