Finished my ASRock E3C224D4I-14S build -- doesn't POST, can't access IPMI

[billhickok]

Hardware is the following:
ASRock E3C224D4I-14S Motherboard
Intel E3-1246 CPU
Crucial CT102472BA160B 8GB ECC RAM x 4
Silverstone Tek ST45SF-G 450W 80+ Gold PSU

When I turn on the machine, all the fans including the CPU fan works. I've connected the board to my monitor via VGA and it just goes straight to sleep. I notice that the BMC LED 1 on the motherboard continually flashes green. I've tried connecting my network switch to the server, and the server to my PC to connect via IPMI. I assigned an IP to the TCP/IPv4 in the LAN properties (192.168.3.77) and pinged it successfully, but entering that IP address into my web browser gives me a "not available" screen. I also tried taking out the CMOS battery for a minute and re-inserting it. No go.

Any idea what's wrong?

 

[Ericloewe]

Can you verify this with a different PSU? If it weren't for the IPMI not working, I'd bet on an unsupported CPU (which would need a BIOS update).

 

[rogerh]

If you never got into the BIOS setup it is hard to see where you set up the IP of the IPMI NIC. Have you looked in the DHCP log of your router (or whatever is supplying DHCP) to see if there is a new entry that could be the motherboard IPMI NIC and tried connecting to that IP with your browser?

 

[billhickok]

Can you verify this with a different PSU? If it weren't for the IPMI not working, I'd bet on an unsupported CPU (which would need a BIOS update).

Unfortunately I do not have another PSU to try out. It seems everything powers on however (all the fans, as well as the keyboard lights when I plug it in via USB.)

I see that the sticker on my motherboard shows firmware P2.00, and my CPU (Intel E3 1246 V3) is listed on the motherboard's compatibility page (shows compatible since FW P2.00.) My particular model of RAM is also listed as compatible with the board.

If you never got into the BIOS setup it is hard to see where you set up the IP of the IPMI NIC. Have you looked in the DHCP log of your router (or whatever is supplying DHCP) to see if there is a new entry that could be the motherboard IPMI NIC and tried connecting to that IP with your browser?

Not sure if i'm doing this right but I've used the arp -a command in cmd and tried copying and pasting every address into my browser. Also looked into my internet provider's event logs and did the same thing. I looked at all the wired DHCP addresses in my router's portal and copied/pasted the most recent ones.

Seems like now the BMC LED on my board is no longer flashing green, but is now constantly on and glowing a faint/dim green. Not sure what that means.

For reference, I have only the PSU, CPU, 4 sticks of RAM, and USB stick currently installed. Not sure what to do next, i'm a bit flustered. I'm also about 5 days from my RMA period so trying to figure this out before Christmas.

 

[billhickok]

Okay some progress. I was able to log into the IPMI by guessing the IP address (I went sequentially and finally got the Megarac SP login page.) After I login however, the little JAVA window is black and says "Host is powered off or in sleep mode." Any ideas where to go from here?

 

[9C1 Newbee]

There should be a tab or an option to open SOL. Or SOL redirect (or something like that). That will allow you to control it. Get ready for java to have a shit hemorrhage
.

 

[billhickok]

It's asking for a BMC IP, is that the same as the IP I used to log into IPMI? If not, how do I find it?

Scratch that, looks like the IP address I used to login is the BMC IP as it clearly states on the dashboard "BMC version 11.00"

Upgrading the BMC to the latest version from ASRock's website now....

 

[9C1 Newbee]

I think that is where you set the ip to what you want it to stay (static).

 

[billhickok]

Successfully updated the BMC to the latest version. Restarted the server but still doesn't give me anything through VGA, and Megarac still says "Host is powered off or in sleep mode."

I downloaded and opened the SOL and it just gives me a black screen.

I think that is where you set the ip to what you want it to stay (static).

Hmm I don't see that option anywhere. I'm looking through the guide (http://www.asrockrack.com/support/IPMI.pdf) and I think this needs to be done via the BIOS?

 

[9C1 Newbee]

I was talking about the BMC ip field.

 

[9C1 Newbee]

There should be some sort of tab for power options. Then it should say something like "power on host"

 

[billhickok]

Launched JViewer and it shows that the server is powered on but it just gives me a black screen.

 

[rogerh]

Either something's not seated properly or something is defective. Not likely to be all the RAM, but you could try one pair or the other pair (don't know if just one stick should work). That leaves the motherboard and CPU, and I don't know how you can tell which. May need to return both, unless someone has a better idea, or you've got another compatible CPU handy.

 

[Ericloewe]

If a RAM problem follows a DIMM, that DIMM is faulty. If it follows a DIMM slot, it's either the motherboard or the CPU. A second CPU can disambiguate between these two options.

 

[billhickok]

Alright, it was a user error...apparently I didn't seat the RAM properly. Those suckers need to be muscled in.

I was able to POST. I updated the BIOS firmware and successfully flashed the LSI 2308 to IT mode.

Question...I'm also planning on utilizing the board's Intel C224 chip for it's mini SAS to SATA conversion, as i'm using 10 drives total (8 from the LSI, 2 from the Intel.) Do I need to flash the C224 to IT mode as well?

If so...anyone know where I can find the files to flash it? I couldn't find anything from Google.

 

[billhickok]

Also, I created a RAID Z2 volume using all 10 drives (10 x 4TB), just to test out, and I see this in the volume manager:

Can someone explain why a sub-category was automatically created and why there is 2 different available storage sizes in each? Shouldn't there be 32TB available space (~29.09TB when using 1024 data measurements)? I'm a little confused.

 

[DKarnov]

There's no IT mode for the C224 chipset, so, no, you don't need to flash it.

The two available spaces are total formatted space (~36TB) and space minus the parity storage - and some fudge factor that 9.3 introduced, which I don't fully grok yet. (ZFS free space is voodoo, worry about the used value more, and don't go over 80%.) The subcategory is only for GUI display purposes, if you go to the shell and look in /mnt/RAIDZ2Volume you'll see there's no duplicate in there.

 

[billhickok]

Thanks for answering my questions.

So that "fudge factor" accounts for the 26.7TB being shown? It seems a few TB short. The "view disks" page shows all ten 4TB drives and when I initially created the volume, I believe it showed 29.09TB space after format.

When I access the space via my Mac/AFP, which goes by 1000KB measurements so it should show ~32TB usable space, I actually see 29TB available. Weird.

e.g. Windows CIFS share showing 26.7TB.

 

[Ericloewe]

The 36.2 TiB match what drive makers call "40TB". For some reason, the devs found that having that raw number was useful (can't imagine why).
Of course, you then have to subtract two times "4TB" (drive maker TB), which doesn't exactly account for all the 10TB (it's some 3TB short). It could be that there's a default quota to prevent completely filling up the pool or something, but I haven't looked into this kind of change in 9.3...

 

[billhickok]

Okay just making sure that's how much space I should be seeing.

I tried setting up an NFS share following the steps in the manual but was unable to write anything onto the server using my Mac. Spent an hour messing with permissions and settings but couldn't change it from being read-only. I gave up and switched to CIFS. Looks like everything is functioning as it should (as least for the time being.)

Now, to do a data scrub...