Marvell Hercules-II SATA question

[MachineShedFred]

Hello.

First, thank you for creating this wonderful software.

Second, here's my problem: I recently upgraded to FreeNAS 8 from 0.7.2 by doing a clean install onto a new CF card, and imported my ZFS pool. I then configured the shares and off we go.

However, it panics when I try to play video off the NAS after a minute or two.

I'm using two Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 PCI-X cards to connect my drives. They use the Marvell Hercules-II Rev. C0 SATA controller, and are both plugged into the PCI-X bus on the motherboard. I've been able to reproduce this issue at a rate of 100%.

However, when I move one of the MV8 boards to a different PCI bus (this motherboard has three, one 32-bit / 33Mhz; one 64-bit / 66Mhz; and the 64-bit / 133Mhz PCI-X) it works just as it should. However, one of the controllers will have half the bandwidth of the other since the bus it's plugged into is signalled at half the rate.

Is there an issue with Marvell Hercules-II drivers on FreeBSD 8, where it doesn't like two controllers on the same PCI bus ID? I'd love to be able to get both of them back to full bandwidth, as I was getting close to the theoretical gigabit ethernet throughput between my FreeNAS 0.7.2 box and my Mac Pro before the upgrade :D

I'll put the cards back and grab the full error from the console. Thanks!

 

[MachineShedFred]

Here's a pic of the console after it happened. Hope it shows some relevant info:

 

[matthewowen01]

a quick Google search show's that the card does not play nice with freeBSD

http://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=freebsd+AOC-SAT2-MV8&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

 

[MachineShedFred]

And a quick read of my post says that this config has been working perfectly for months, with the only change being FreeNAS 8.

Pardon me for thinking that someone may want to know about this, and take a shot at fixing it; especially when I do some work to show what the problem might potentially be by finding a workaround.

 

[matthewowen01]

here are a few posts showing the same symptoms you are with FreeBSD 8:
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.os.freebsd.stable/72287
http://freebsd.1045724.n5.nabble.com/Marvell-MV88SX6081-on-FreeBSD-8-0-RELEASE-td4223276.html
http://marc.info/?l=freebsd-hardware&m=126556156829220&w=3

it's a problem with FreeBSD 8, not FreeNAS 8.0

reverting to 7.2 may be best for you, if you want to stick with 8, i can vouch for the LSI SAS3081E-R as working great under FreeNAS 8 and 7.2. it supports 8 SAS or SATA drives, PCI-e x4. I get 250MB/s read and write to my 8 disk raidz2.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118100

 

[MachineShedFred]

Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. At least I made a backup of the drives before doing the ZFS upgrade, so a reversion to 0.7.2 is possible.

Thanks for the suggestion of alternate hardware, but that would also mean a motherboard swap, as I don't have PCI Express (PCI-e) on this board. Part of this 'experience' for me was the low cost of entry because I could recycle parts from a 5-year old workstation (and add some others) to make a kick-ass NAS.

For now, it's stable with the two controllers on separate PCI busses, so I'll leave it for a bit.

 

[matthewowen01]

really sorry about the bad news.

 

[ixdwhite]

The mvs driver author is very responsive so if you have reproducible issues you should drop him a line at mav@freebsd.org. PCI-X is pretty much gone, though....