LSI 9211 Booting Order

[EponymousOne]

Hi all,

I've got an ASUS P9D-E/4L (latest BIOS) motherboard which has three LSI 9211 card in it (flashed to IT with the P20 ROM & BIOS Package).

All my drives including the boot SSD are connected to these cards and I'm not using the onboard controller. I have enough slots so why not :)

All the drives get passed through to the BIOS as expected.

I have two questions:

1. What is meant by the "Boot Support" option in the Ctrl+C config menu for the cards? There are four options: Disabled, Enabled BIOS Only, Enabled OS Only, Enabled BIOS & OS. I've no idea which one I should select for best FreeNAS compatibility.

2. I have a small problem in that on certain reboots, the cards must detect the drives in a different order as my boot device always changes to the wrong drive - no matter how many times I set it back. Does anyone know why this happens or how to fix/workaround the issue?

Thanks.

 

[Pezo]

I would suggest you just move the boot drive to a port on the motherboard and disable the boot options on all HBAs.
This way your system should boot faster (because it can skip the HBA boot ROM) and you would also solve your boot drive problem.

Re-reading your post just now I realize you have the boot drive in an external drive bay, that's why it's connected to the HBA, right?
In that case I can't help I'm afraid...

 

[Chris Moore]

On those cards (I use similar) when you clear them you don't have to flash the boot ROM, you can just flash the firmware which is normally the first file to flash. That leaves the card in a state where you can't use it for anything but a 'dumb' HBA but it works fine. I am using five of them that way.

 

[EponymousOne]

Thanks for your replies.

Chris, I think if I remove the BIOS/Boot ROM I won't be able to boot from the SSD which is attached the the LSI controller. I want to be able to do this as it allows me to use one of the front ports for the boot device.

 

[Chris Moore]

Thanks for your replies.

Chris, I think if I remove the BIOS/Boot ROM I won't be able to boot from the SSD which is attached the the LSI controller. I want to be able to do this as it allows me to use one of the front ports for the boot device.

That's not necessarily the way to go, but if you want to do it, good luck.

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[Chris Moore]

Two different people tell you that what you are doing isn't the best way and you came to find a way to fix your problem, but you insist on doing the same thing that is causing the problem.

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[EponymousOne]

What I haven't seen is a compelling reason why what I'm doing isn't the best way. For all intents and purposes this setup should work as these cards have full boot support. Before effectively giving up I'd like to see if there is a way to get this current setup working. If there really isn't a way then I will try the suggestion and swap everything over. Just because you don't have the answer doesn't mean someone else won't. :)

 

[Chris Moore]

What I haven't seen is a compelling reason why what I'm doing isn't the best way. For all intents and purposes this setup should work as these cards have full boot support. Before effectively giving up I'd like to see if there is a way to get this current setup working. If there really isn't a way then I will try the suggestion and swap everything over. Just because you don't have the answer doesn't mean someone else won't. :)

You basically just said that I am too stupid to know how to make it work.
That's hilarious

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[BigDave]

Hi all,

I've got an ASUS P9D-E/4L (latest BIOS) motherboard which has three LSI 9211 card in it (flashed to IT with the P20 ROM & BIOS Package).

All my drives including the boot SSD are connected to these cards and I'm not using the onboard controller. I have enough slots so why not :)

All the drives get passed through to the BIOS as expected.

I have two questions:

1. What is meant by the "Boot Support" option in the Ctrl+C config menu for the cards? There are four options: Disabled, Enabled BIOS Only, Enabled OS Only, Enabled BIOS & OS. I've no idea which one I should select for best FreeNAS compatibility.

2. I have a small problem in that on certain reboots, the cards must detect the drives in a different order as my boot device always changes to the wrong drive - no matter how many times I set it back. Does anyone know why this happens or how to fix/workaround the issue?

Thanks.

If booting off one of the drives connected to the backplane, you would probably find the answers
from the manufacturer's firmware/manual/instructions. There can be subtle differences on the
configuration needed to set the boot drive on the HBA. I know this works, as I have done this about
a year ago. The complexity for me was not worth the effort and I now use the method that was
recommended by the previous members postings. You can do what you are attempting, but since
it's not a popular method, the responses are going to be limited.

 

[Pezo]

You could try removing the boot ROM only from those two cards the boot drive is not connected to.

 

[Ericloewe]

For all intents and purposes this setup should work as these cards have full boot support.

Which is very buggy. The boot ROM frequently causes conflicts and other weird issues and is best avoided.