LSI HBA Card not showing in FreeNAS

[AstroZombie]

Specs are as follows:

Asrock Rack X47OD4U
Latest BIOS and IPMI
32GB ECC RAM
Ryzen 7 3700X


So I purchased this card after much research (after almost going with a PCI-E card)

Amazon.co.uk

Along with the forward cables

VANDESAIL Mini-SAS Cables, 0.5m Internal Mini-SAS to 4x SAS SATA Forward Breakout Cable Hard Drive Data Transfer Cable (SAS Cable): Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

Shop for VANDESAIL PC products at the Amazon.co.uk Computers & Accessories store.

www.amazon.co.uk

You can see that when the card initialises it see the single HDD it controlling at the moment (plans for adding 2 25" RED drives in the future) everything is wired correctly and all connections are fine

These are my current CMS settings in BIOS.

FreeNAS can't see the HBA (it use to and seen it running in IT mode but with no drives) i've been pulling my hair out for 2 days trying to figure out why this wasn't working please help.

 

[jgreco]

Keep drilling down.

Within FreeNAS, does the card show up with "lspci"?

Does the card show up during kernel boot (look at the output of "dmesg" or the contents of /var/run/dmesg.boot)?

What's the output from "camcontrol devlist"?

Any error messages on console?

 

[kingtj]

I'm not sure I have any answers for you? But just tying to clarify. You're saying you originally had the card in IT mode and FreeNAS detected it properly? So then you added a hard drive to it and FreeNAS stopped seeing it? That's why you re-flashed the card back out of IT mode, so you could verify the card saw the drive attached to it via the card BIOS (as you're showing in these screen shots)?

If so, that does sound odd to me. In my own limited experiences with it, the LSI HBA cards work fine in FreeNAS as long as they're in IT mode and the system detects the card's presence. (At boot, in IT mode, the BIOS boot process will, of course, report that the HBA card can find no devices attached after it shows a line confirming the device is initializing.) I wonder if it could be some kind of problem with the drive you've got connected?

Also, when flashing the LSI card to IT mode, there are different versions of that firmware out there. I believe you want to be on version 20 to work right with FreeNAS 11 series.

 

[AstroZombie]

I'm not sure I have any answers for you? But just tying to clarify. You're saying you originally had the card in IT mode and FreeNAS detected it properly? So then you added a hard drive to it and FreeNAS stopped seeing it? That's why you re-flashed the card back out of IT mode, so you could verify the card saw the drive attached to it via the card BIOS (as you're showing in these screen shots)?

If so, that does sound odd to me. In my own limited experiences with it, the LSI HBA cards work fine in FreeNAS as long as they're in IT mode and the system detects the card's presence. (At boot, in IT mode, the BIOS boot process will, of course, report that the HBA card can find no devices attached after it shows a line confirming the device is initializing.) I wonder if it could be some kind of problem with the drive you've got connected?

Also, when flashing the LSI card to IT mode, there are different versions of that firmware out there. I believe you want to be on version 20 to work right with FreeNAS 11 series.

I haven't flashed the card at all it remains in IT mode there is a disconnect somewhere with the I believe the motherboard BIOS settings (the CSM options re oprom) and the card booting instead of just initialising and passing onto the system to continue with boot into freenas.

The only disconnect I can see at this time is that it's running: 20.00.07.00 which is the IT firmware for Windows/MSDOS and the current version (as per the broadcom site for FreeBDS is 20.00.00.00.

 

[John Doe]

I cant open that amazon uk link (firewall blocks it). Just to double check, is it with breakout cable or without?

NOT WORKING W/O Backplane:

Working:

usually freenas comes with all required drivers. cannot remember to heard that something need to be installed.

I discovered also strange behavior with my adapter. several reboots and the problem solved itself

 

[AstroZombie]

I can't open that amazon uk link (firewall blocks it). Just to double check, is it with breakout cable or without?

NOT WORKING W/O Backplane:
View attachment 36376



Working:

View attachment 36377




usually freenas comes with all required drivers. cannot remember to heard that something need to be installed.

I discovered also strange behavior with my adapter. several reboots and the problem solved itself

The second.

 

[John Doe]

that cable looks fine to me.

and in freenas under view discs they are not showing up?

sound stupid, but have your tried to turn it off and on again?
As I said, had similar problem with mine. after 3-4 reboots it was working

 

[AstroZombie]

Okay huge update.

After more googling it seems to be now working in freenas 100%.

Here's the steps I found googling if anyone comes across this in the future for this motherboard specifically.

Before booting anywhere change the following settings in the BIOS

Advanced -> AMD PBS -> PCIe x16/2x8/4x4 Switch to 2x8 (Source)

In the BIOS under Boot > CSM >

Disable OpRom on all PCI-E slots.

As per the in the Avago Utility above set the boot support to BIOS only.

Set your freenas boot device as boot priority one exit and save changes and hopefully everything should work out for you.