LSI 9220-8i SAS

[Colby]

Hey Guys, I need some help regarding a SAS controller card that i bought from ebay that i want to use a HBA. This is the card i purchased from ebay along with 2 of these mini sas to sata cables and I followed this guide to crossflash the controller card into IT mode which i had no trouble doing.

I switched all my HDDs from the motherboard's internal SATA controller over the SAS card, started the machine up and went into the sas configuration utility and all my HDDs showed up as expected. (See image)

But when i try to boot the computer expecting FreeNAS to boot; the card is stuck saying "initializing.../" and will just hang there with no other output (does have a spinning forward slash). I turn the machine off and go back into the sas configuration and disable the boot option and restart the machine and now it boots into FreeNAS but errors start to show up as well and FreeNAS never boots (see image). I should also note that i don't see any of the HDDs on the list of storage devices when the kernel first starts

Am i missing something obvious here or is this a bad controller card? Thanks in advance!

 

[mjws00]

I don't think you are at bad controller yet. Could be lots of things.

List the exact details of all your hardware. Flash to version p16 of the IT firmware so that it matches the bsd drivers. Disconnect the drives from the controller, and see if it boots. Add them back one at a time. Grab a livecd of your favorite linux distro and see if it boots and sees everything. Or a freebsd 9.2 disc. I'd reseat the card, and try a different slot. I suspect reflashing might be your ticket, and also wouldn't be surprised if the card functions perfectly under a different os.

It's possible that the card is bad. I just like to exhaust every alternative before I worry about rma's and shipping etc.

Good Luck. If you provide good detail, this community is pretty sharp.

 

[Colby]

I should have also noted that i tried to boot FreeBSD 10 which resulted in the same issues from the above pic.

• I have flashed the SAS card a few time now which always result in the same problem.
• These are the files i downloaded and placed on a USB to crossflash the SAS controller to.
• In terms of hardware i am just running an old MSI Z77 and Intel Core i5 3330 i had spare.

I am going to guess that maybe the rom i flashed is old and need to a newer one?

 

[mjws00]

Best practice is to match driver version with freenas bsd driver version. So for 9.2.1.8 that is p16 (p19 is current). Here are the p16 drivers from LSI.

Cool. Glad you hit freebsd10 as well. I only mention something like linux to give you hope, were it to work perfectly. You are on an extremely popular card, so it shouldn't be too rough to get it going. Normally mismatched firmware boots, but can have glitchy intermittent issues.

I'd also make sure and do a full level 7 wipe and re-add the sas id. You can also skip the bootrom as we don't need it in IT mode for freenas.

Some decent info and discussion here:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...11-8i-card-and-disk-detection-problems.21118/

 

[Colby]

So i finally got a chance to play around some more with the SAS controller. I reflashed the card with the p16 drivers but still having the same problems trying to boot. I did put the 2nd PCI slot which actually did boot into FreeNAS but non of the disks showed up, rebooted and it was back to the same problem.

 

[Colby]

So interestingly, if i boot into FreeNAS one of the HDDs that is plugged into the LSI controller is actually mentioned on screen before i start getting all these IOC Faults if that helps.

 

[Ericloewe]

Some consumer motherboards have been known to be problematic with LSI SAS cards and other server stuff. Particularly, word of mouth says some of their PCI-e 16x slots only work with graphics cards.

 

[Colby]

I had the same thought before, i took the controller card out and placed it into a HP Prolient (N54L) and had the same results. :|

 

[mjws00]

Yep. Definitely got me wondering the same thing. I'm far more tempted to lean towards a compatibility issue than a hardware problem. You've done the right things with the card as far as I can tell. Not sure how you proceed without a known good mobo at this point. You wanted to grab something that supports ECC anyway, right? ;)

Sorry I'm out of ideas. Feels like you could swap a hundred cards through there with no change. Decent gaming boards are sometimes tuned heavily towards sli and the like. Good luck.

 

[mjws00]

Heh. You are doing the right things. Maybe time to send in the card? The fact that it flashes nicely and showed up once concerns me. Pretty good chance you end up in the same spot with the new one. But there aren't many options left.

 

[Colby]

Does someone have a list of verified compatibility with the LSI 1015?

 

[mjws00]

Everything on the hardware sticky. The card is extremely popular, a large percentage of the signatures you see will show a known good setup. It's popular on the media sites as well such as http://servethehome.com. Never seen a list built that way. But truthfully if you want data integrity you are going to want to look at the options listed in the sticky. Believe me we'd all recommend something cheaper and better if it existed.

 

[Colby]

Sorry to raise this post from the dead but i wanted to give an update to anyone else who is having the same problems as me. I managed to get a hold a second IBM 1015m and repeated the same process which worked perfectly fine, i am running it in production now. I restored the original firmware to the first card which continues to have problems. So i guess to take this as a hardware fault of some kind.