high point 2720sgl

[jwhitt]

Anyone know if the high point 2720 sgl sata 3 card is supported under 8.2?

My plan is tp revamp my storage sub system currently using 6 onboard with a pci 2 port card and sata 2 drives (8 1TB seagates) and pci nics. Going to switxh to this card if it works and pci express nics and hopefully remove the bottleneck that i got myself into.

 

[matthewowen01]

highpoint web page says yes, can't confirm as i do not own one.
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series_rr272x.htm

 

[jwhitt]

Thats what i saw, but was just wondering if anyone had one.

 

[JohnKnee]

Sorry to hijack this thread.

I have this card. Unfortunately it is not identified by Freenas 8.0beta4. Highpoint website has driver for version 8.0 but I am unable to make it work. Sorry noob to freebsd.

Anyone know howto get this card working with freenas 8.0. The driver is at
http://www.highpoint-tech.cn/BIOS_Driver/page/rr272x_1x.htm

a step by step instructions would be much appreciated. I have spent a whole day reading the freebsd site and various posts but I am unable to successfully extract the tar image or to add the packages if i extract them to usb drive first. Following the highpoint instructions is almost useless.
http://www.highpoint-tech.cn/BIOS_Driver/rr272x_1x/FreeBSD/Install_FreeBSD_RR272x_1x.pdf

Thanks in advance.

 

[JohnKnee]

Well the last 48 hrs has been a huge learning curve for me. First time user of FreeBSD or Unix.

Anyhow, I must have been doing something wrong typing in the highpoint instructions as I could not get the relevant file into the boot/kernel folder. Kept getting error codes or incorrect file/directory errors. After a lot of reading and trial and error, I was able to use SSH putty to get the rr272x_1x.ko into the correct folder but that is where I am stuck now.

I tried using the "echo ’rr272x_1x_load=”YES”’ >> /boot/defaults/loader.conf" from the CLI and I can see it in the text editor with putty but the driver does not load on reboot. I have checked with kldstat command. I can manually load the driver with kldload and it shows up okay. A reboot and ssh back in shows that the driver is still in the boot/kernel directory and the load command is in the loader.conf file.

I read the forums and FAQ and thus tried putting the driver comand ’rr272x_1x_load=”YES”' in /etc/rc.conf after doing a mount -uw / first. Did not work

Tried it in /conf/base/etc/rc.conf but no go. (I made sure to undo the command in each place before I tried somewhere else).

If anyone can give me a hint or some guidance it would be much appreciated.

Thanks

 

[antarctica7]

Try placing the rr272x_1x-8.0.ko file in both /boot/kernel and in /boot/modules. Then edit /boot/loader.conf (Not /boot/default/loader.conf) and place the following line below the kern.cam.boot_delay=10000 line and reboot the system. Don't forget to remove any edits you made to the /boot/default/loader.conf file or better yet replace it with the backup copy you made before editing it.

Code:

rr272x_1x-8.0_load=”YES”

 

[JohnKnee]

Thank you antartica7.

I tried what you suggested but no go. After rebooting, the driver is not loaded. I have confirmed that the driver is in the boot/modules and boot/kernel locations and that the loader.conf still has the changes after reload/reboot.

I manually loaded the driver via kldload and did a dmesg | tail to get the output below.

/root$ dmesg | tail
da0: < VERBATIM PMAP> Removable Direct Access SCSI-0 device
da0: 40.000MB/s transfers
da0: 3824MB (7831552 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 487C)
GEOM: da0s1: geometry does not match label (16h,63s != 255h,63s).
Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/ufs/FreeNASs1a
ZFS filesystem version 4
ZFS storage pool version 15
fuse4bsd: version 0.3.9-pre1, FUSE ABI 7.8
rr272x_1x: RocketRAID 272x_1x controller driver v1.0.10.0719 (Jul 19 2010 19:17:50)
rr272x_1x: no controller detected.

I have the card flashed with the FreeBSD ver 1.2 driver at the moment and I am able to see the drive at bootup on the Card bios screen.

Any suggestions?

PS the Verbatim is my flash drive with freenas on it.

 

[JohnKnee]

@antarctica7

I also tried flashing the cards (I have two for a Norco 4220 case) to the non-raid firmware but no difference.

Then I had a 'lightbulb moment'. My server is headless so I attached a keyboard and monitor and rebooted the system with the non-raid firmware and not the FreeBSD firmware for the card. Still the driver would not load.

I then tried to load the driver manually on boot (option 6 via load command) and it loads. I have five hard drives. Four are installed on the motherboard sata ports while I figure this card out and one test drive is on the 2720 card. On booting freenas, all drives are recognized on the initial boot up freebsd screen. I see the card being recognized and after booting going to the loader prompt and issuing a lsdev command shows all drives except the drive on the 2720 shows as bad slice/info whilst the other four come up as part swap and part zfs.

After freenas is loaded the drive does not show up when you go to create a new volume but the other four do. I have attached a log of the dmesg if it helps.

Thanks again.

View attachment system info.txt

 

[antarctica7]

I just got this card in today and I'm running into the same wall you are. I even installed the management software and get no response to query controllers. Like you, I'm stumped. Don't know where to go from here unless there is anyone else that can chime in on this thread with some idea's.

 

[Harlequin]

I have a theory I am hoping to test this weekend.

I believe that I have the driver off the highpoint website working but that the management tools are the problem.

What I have done so far is mount the cf card in read write mode with
mount -uw /

then copied the rr27xx etc etc .ko file to /boot/kernel
and the modified /boot/loader.conf to include rr27 etc etc_load="YES" (sorry don't have the kernel name to hand)

When I loaded that kernel mod with a kld_load I got a "no card found" response. However when it loads at boot /var/messages contains that card initializing and responding in exactly the same way as an older RR1720 card I have.

My plan for the weekend is to fit the card to my windows machine (I know sorry) and set it up with all the drives connected using the windows drivers. Then transplant that back into my freenas box. I'm hoping that way the card will have the drives identified and setup and freenas can access them.

WIll let you know how I go.

 

[Setius]

I was able to get this card working with my AMD system running FreeNAS 8.0.1RC2 using non-raid bios and Highpoint drivers. I will try to make a simple guide for the card and post later. Not sure of the stability and performance, but seems Ok so far.

AMD Athlon II 255
MSI K9A2 Plat
8 GB RAM
4x 2TB Samsung Spinpoint F4

 

[Harlequin]

Also managed to get this card working using the non-raid bios and having the drivers load at boot.

My problem ended up being the cables that I had bought. I had bought Sata --> SAS not SAS --> sata.

Prep - boot the card in windows and flash with the non-raid bios from highpoint.

Step 1: Download and extract the drivers from highpoint to a location your freenas can see (ie one of freenas' storage pools)
Step 2: ssh to freenas as root
Step 3: "mount -uw /" to enable you to write to the usb stick
Step 4: copy the kernel module for me it was rr272x_1x-8.0-amd64.ko to /boot/kernel
Step 5: edit /boot/loader.conf to include the line rr272x_1x-8.0-amd64_load="YES" (or x86 module if that is the one you are using)
Step 6: save and reboot

The card now worked for me at this stage.

 

[JohnKnee]

Thanks Harlequin.

Just a clarification on the bios you used. On the highpoint website, the main download screen gives you the ability to pick a raid and non-raid bios. However on top in yellow colour, their is also an option to pick drivers/bios for linux/freebsd.

This bios has a different date "RR272x_1x-BIOS-v1.2-110704-legacy_single.zip" vs the non-raid bios on the main page "rr272x_1x-BIOS-v1.2-110126.zip". Which one did you use?

Also did you modify any bios parameters such as disabling the INT 13 support to prevent the card from booting the system?

Thanks again.:D

 

[Harlequin]

I used the drivers from the archived area here - http://www.highpoint-tech.cn/BIOS_Driver/page/rr272x_1x.htm

and the bios driver from the front page - http://www.highpoint-tech.cn/BIOS_Driver/rr272x_1x/BIOS/rr272x_1x-BIOS-v1.2-110126.zip

I didn't modify anything in the bios settings.

One other thing which I should mention - though I don't know if this makes any difference. I connected the drives for the first time booting in a windows machine before transferring it to my freenas box. I don't believe though that this should make any difference.

 

[Harlequin]

Fup - I did some additional testing - I needed to initialize the disks in another operating system

I did it 2 different ways - first was in windows and I initialised all the drives gpt

The second set I did with gparted. Without doing this freenas wont detect the attached drives.

So add that in for a Step 7: Initialise the drives in another machine.

 

[Harlequin]

Current system is now

FreeNAS Build FreeNAS-8.0.1-RC2-amd64 (7813)
Platform AMD Athlon(tm) II X2 255 Processor
Memory 16238MB
Motherboard GA-890GPA-UD3H (8 sata ports)
Raid Highpoint rr2720 controller

Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/ufs/FreeNASs1a 927M 429M 424M 50% /
devfs 1.0K 1.0K 0B 100% /dev
/dev/md0 4.3M 3.5M 404K 90% /etc
/dev/md1 732K 32K 644K 5% /mnt
/dev/md2 75M 17M 51M 25% /var
/dev/ufs/FreeNASs4 20M 856K 17M 5% /data
storage 9.4T 6.0T 3.3T 64% /mnt/storage
redundant 685G 165G 520G 24% /mnt/redundant
data 11T 92G 10T 1% /mnt/data

Storage is a 7 x 1.5tb Samsung ecogreen 5400 no redundancy
Redundant is 2 x 750gb Samsung 7200 Mirror
Data is 7 x 2tb Samsung Ecogreen 5400 in raidz

I am now copying everything off storage onto data and will then rebuild that array with raidz 1 disk redundancy - as we speak I am getting c 45mb/s transfer from storage which is onboard across to data which is all on the highpoint

 

[golemcito]

Wow, nice setup.

Can you show us what speed do you get in your cifs transfers?

Thanx in advance

 

[Harlequin]

Wow, nice setup.

Can you show us what speed do you get in your cifs transfers?

Thanx in advance

Will test for you tonight and let you know - I don't really use cifs for anything other than the wife accessing photos - everything else is nfs but will squirt something bigger and let you know.

 

[Harlequin]

Squirted an iso across cifs to the Nas box - sat at 31mb/s. I believe the limiting factor is the source drive in this case. I don't have any other raid arrays to supply data from

 

[golemcito]

ok, and under nfs?

I´m asking you that because i´m stucked in 30-40MB/sec but there are people who says they can saturate a Gigabit LAN, but using an AMD processor I think it´s impossible, and I have an Phenom 1090T, intel NIC and 8GB RAM.

One more thing... How do you "feed" the 16 hard disks?