LSI HBA Install - Loading Operating System...

[imcnoyd]

I don't need any help on this as this is just an informative post. Hopefully this will help someone else. I tried searching for this problem both here and just googling for it but didn't come up with anything related. This issue may even be obvious to many but it is the first time I've encountered it so I figured I should share my experience.

I have a custom FreeNAS box running 8.2.0. In preparations of expanding the system to two 8 drive raid volumes I added an LSI SAS 9207-8e card and a Sans Digital TR8x drive tower. After installing the card, attaching the drive tower, and installing a single drive in the tower for testing I powered the system on. It ran through the normal BIOS POST for the motherboard, LSI card, and a 2 port SATA card (can't remember who made it) but stopped at "Loading Operating System...". Reboot and hop into the motherboard bios to make sure the USB flash drive that I was using for the FreeNAS boot drive was still selected as the first boot drive which it was not for some reason. Set it to first boot and reboot the machine. Stuck at the same spot. Hop into the LSI BIOS but at first glance I didn't see anything that would cause a problem. Ejected the one drive that was in the drive tower, rebooted, and it loaded FreeNAS just fine. So it had to be the LSI card inserting itself into the boot order. Went back in to the LSI BIOS. The HBA was selected by default so I hit ENTER. That takes you into the adapter properties. At the bottom of the main list will be a line for "Boot Support" which is by default set to "Enabled BIOS and OS". I ignored this the first time looking through things because I had the USB drive set to first boot and the LSI card set to last in the motherboard BIOS. Apparently it makes a difference. I set the Boot Support to "Disabled", saved the settings and rebooted. After that it booted right into FreeNAS with out a hitch and showed the single drive plugged into the drive tower.

So there ya go. Hopefully this saves someone some time.

 

[RichR]

Realize this is an older post, but OMG - 4 days too late (data center is 250 miles away)... I have multiple machines with 3x LSI 9201-16i (only 45 drives each though), and the only way to get them to boot correctly into FreeNAS is to force the reboot from a long list of drives each time. I couldn't set the default boot device in the boot prioritiesbecasue only the 1st 15 devices show up, none of which are the small SSD that FreeNAS is on. Also, Supermicro told me to disable the option ROM for each of the 3 slots where the cards are.... I'm not sure if one is better than the other, but if both work, I'll try disabling it form the LSI ROM.

Thanks for the hint! I'll report my findings.

 

[marbus90]

Disabling the Option ROM would only disable the bootrom of the card itself so it can't insert itself. You can also flash the card with the P16 firmware and skip the bootrom this time around.

Are these the 45drive.com pods? :)

 

[RichR]

Kind of (45drive.com). V1 we bought the enclosures from them then customized the rest (before 45drives.com even existed), but I made subsequent design revisions, now on V4. But we won't use them anymore. The density is nice, but frankly unneccesary and at times a pita.... having to shut down a production machine to get inside, for whatever reason, isn't fun, nor worth the stress.

Regarding the boot ROM, would you mind explaining a little more? Not following you when you say "can't insert itself." I thought if disabling the boot option from the LSI bios would be the best approach - apparently the MB won't see the drives if I do either. Ideally, I'd like to have the option to load the LSI BIOS if needed, but not have the drives show up on the BIOS of the motherboard. If they do show up as boot options in the MB, I can't choose the SSD.

Attached is one of 3 racks of these