New install - install hanging after Adaptec 2805 card

[NOT_Bill_Gates]

Old FreeNAS user, but modernizing to new 9.3 OS and new hardware (very different from my old re-purposed laptop with a bunch of external drives attached). I bought a Lenovo ThinkServer TS440 (see the specs if interested) and as it natively has 5 SATA ports and I want 6 for RAIDZ2, I added an Adaptec 2805 (yes, please do NOT tell me once again that I don't want hardware RAID and that Adaptec sucks. If I really cannot use this card I guess I will buy just a simple HBA, but I'm hoping someone will be able to help me out here). The Adaptec 2805 card is theoretically supported by FreeBSD and I have disabled all of the write caching and turned off the Runtime BIOS, essentially making it just 8 additional SATA ports. It is connected from the card to the backplanes that are on the Lenovo via MiniSAS connectors. I can see all of the 6 drives in the Adaptec configuration utility and they look OK. They are all Seagate 4 TB NAS drives (the Adaptec Config Util calls them 3.6 TB). I can boot into FreeDOS or PuppyLinux (I used DOS to update the firmware on both the Lenovo and the Adaptec card & Puppy just to test the system), so it boots OK otherwise.

When I boot from the FreeNAS install CD, it hangs after identifying the Adaptec 2805 card. Prior to that, it looks like everything else is identified and going OK. OK, smart people, who has some ideas for me?

Thanks in advance, FreeNAS community!

 

[Fuganater]

Did you try to install FreeNAS with the card out of the system and the only thing connected is your boot drive?

 

[NOT_Bill_Gates]

Yes, I did boot the system with just the DVD drive and it booted fine and saw the USB flash drives. Thanks for looking into this for me. I appreciate your willingness to help me troubleshoot.

 

[Fuganater]

So after you install FreeNAS on the USB flash drives. (Mirror I assume since you said driveS), What happens when you shut it down, add the Adaptec card in, and boot the system back up? Does it hang on boot? What errors is the console giving you?

 

[NOT_Bill_Gates]

That I haven't yet done. I was able to boot into the FreeNAS install and was given the option to install, but I did not. Long story, but as you noted, I had initially one 16 GB USB flash drive on which I WAS going to install FreeNAS 9.3, but after more reading, I went out and bought 2 Lexar 32 GB flash drives and was going to install them onto them in a mirrored configuration, but never got that far. I can try that when I get home (I'm at work now, sucks, but someone's got to do it. Otherwise, I cannot afford to buy new toys like this new build! :)

Thanks again for looking into this for me. I will re-post after I have tried it. On another note, the above mentioned Lexar drives are USB 3.0 and are in USB 3.0 ports (there are only 2 USB 2.0 ports on the machine and the other 6 are USB 3.0). Do you think this might be an issue? Guess I'll find out tonight, eh?

 

[Fuganater]

FreeNAS has issues with USB 3.0. Use the USB 2.0 ports for you flash drives.

 

[NOT_Bill_Gates]

OK. I have heard that. 2 questions:

(1) should I bother to try booting from the FreeNAS install CD and seeing if the install works on the Lexar flash drives as currently configured?

(2) Will version 10 (whenever it is ready for prime time) address the USB 3.0 issue?

I asssume that since FreeNAS is really in RAM once it is up and running from whatever medium it is on that the performance of USB 2.0 vs 3.0 is not going to really matter for the boot drives, right? I presume that there is an option in the system's BIOS that lets me change the USB 3.0 drives to run at 2.0 speeds only. Would this resolve any issues or is it more issues with the chipset?

 

[Fuganater]

1. Yes. I would to make sure that part works.
2. No idea. 10 is still under heavy development.

I don't know how it "runs", I just know it does. :)
There is no advantage of USB 3.0 over USB 2.0 for FreeNAS.
You can not change that in the BIOS because USB 3.0 uses a different controller. USB 2.0 is native in all modern motherboards.... I think.

Have you done a MEMTEST or CPU Test yet?

 

[NOT_Bill_Gates]

Yes. The memory (32 GB ECC Corsair) and the CPU (Xeon 3.2 GHz) are both fine. While I realize that the 2 USB 2.0 ports are on a different controller, there is I believe a setting in the BIOS which can make some or all of the 3.0 ports NOT run at full "SuperSpeed) 3.0 specs. Would it be useful or helpful to try tweaking that IF the system hangup occurs when 3.0 flash drives are in?

Maybe I will try booting the system with the Adaptec card still in but NO flash drives in. That way, I will know if the system hangup is due to the Adaptec card itself or if it just has the Adaptec info still on the screen when the real hangup is the next layer, perhaps the USB 3.0.

Hmmmm. Food for thought. I am now anxious to go home and test out some theories. Mr. Fuganater, thanks again. Will re-post later this evening...

 

[solarisguy]

It is not USB speeds that bothers FreeNAS, it is the chipset. However, I recall a motherboard with a BIOS that allowed the USB 3.0 chipset to run in USB 2.0 emulation mode or something like that (the actual language was different - more techy...).

It is not important whether your USB memory devices are USB 3.0, it is important what write speed they have (up to 40MB/s). Since in general you cannot get USB 2.0 ones that are as fast for writing as the USB 3.0 ones, it means that buying USB 3.0 offers certain advantages. Possibly not much in daily operations (although if keeping .system there, it might matter more), but when re-installing, and re-installing, and re-installing my patience was tested visibly less when my FreeNAS boot devices had decent speeds.

P.S.
Fuganater offers you very good advice.

 

[NOT_Bill_Gates]

Excellent. Yes, the theoretical (on the package) for the new flash drives I got last night said 150 MB/s. I'm thinking my mileage may vary, but still, faster is better when it comes to most things computerish.

I really think that USB 3.0 has now been out long enough where newer OS kernels should support it better, so I am very hopeful that those who know how will be able to add support soon. I am grateful that techies in the open source community do so much to support the varieties of different hardware as well as they do, so I certainly cannot complain about USB 3.0 support.

Oh, and SolarisGuy, I really like the comment on your profile, NAS-ty with the FreeNAS. Awesome!

 

[solarisguy]

Yes. The memory (32 GB ECC Corsair) and the CPU (Xeon 3.2 GHz) are both fine. While I realize that the 2 USB 2.0 ports are on a different controller, there is I believe a setting in the BIOS which can make some or all of the 3.0 ports NOT run at full "SuperSpeed) 3.0 specs. Would it be useful or helpful to try tweaking that IF the system hangup occurs when 3.0 flash drives are in?

Maybe I will try booting the system with the Adaptec card still in but NO flash drives in. That way, I will know if the system hangup is due to the Adaptec card itself or if it just has the Adaptec info still on the screen when the real hangup is the next layer, perhaps the USB 3.0.

Hmmmm. Food for thought. I am now anxious to go home and test out some theories. Mr. Fuganater, thanks again. Will re-post later this evening...

USB 3.0 errors tend to manifest differently. However, your proposed test would be a quick one.

Googling found a post https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/display-system-processes-not-appearing.2330/ from someone with FreeNAS 8.0.1RC1 and Adaptec 2805. May be FreeNAS 9.3.1 does not work with your card, while older versions did, but may be one of your card settings or some system incompatibility (in the TS440/Adaptec/FreeNAS trio) prevents it from running. Try two popular tests: resetting the card to factory defaults and placing it in a different slot.

 

[NOT_Bill_Gates]

So, the follow-up: I tried booting without the flash drives in place and it still hung up in the boot process but now before the Adaptec card was identified by the BSD boot sequence. Then, I noticed that there was some general squirrelliness when booting in general with the Adaptec card: it said that the firmware was old (I had just recently flashed it to the most recent) and later said that it was corrupt. I flashed it again and verified it and it was fine. I then was about to chuck the card when I thought I would try it in another PCI Express slot, although the other slot is a 4x slot and the other is a 16x slot (the card is a 8x). It now seemed to work fine in the boot-up sequence and I installed it on the two Lexar flash drives (separate topic, but it gave me the choice of installing to one or more disks and I selected both and installed, but it never said that it was doing a mirror or a stripe or what. I cannot imagine it would be a good idea to stripe across both drives cause if either one failed, no boot, but it didn't say specifically that it was mirroring and/or which one was the main and which one was the alternate).

Back to topic: I then looked at the choices for storage and it looked like there were none, as if it didn't see them (I can see them in the Adaptec array utility) in FreeNAS. I then looked into what Adaptec said was there in its utility and it said that SMART was N. Now, this is nuts. Not having SMART is, well, dumb! I obviously need to know if a drive is failing. So, a stupid question, but, is the backbone possibly preventing the card from seeing the SATA drives as such? I mean, there is a power thingy in the backbone (2 cages to hold up to 4 hot swap hard drives each) plus a MiniSAS port. I assumed that the MiniSAS cable would transfer all of the info that a typical SATA cable does, including SMART info, right? So why does it not think that it should support SMART? Does there need to be another connection between the card and the backbones other than the MiniSAS cable? There are 2 3-pin connectors for I2C or SGPIO, but they are not connected to anything now. I have tried both Auto and Disabled for the Backplane setting.

Sorry for so many questions in one post. Feel free to take on just parts of my many questions one at a time.

 

[solarisguy]

[B]@NOT_Bill_Gates[/B], give your Adaptec 2805 to someone who is still using that card in production, so she or he can have a quality spare.

 

[solarisguy]

@NOT_Bill_Gates, buy a used or new 9211-8i card

 

[Fuganater]

@NOT_Bill_Gates, buy a used or new 9211-8i card

+1 You can get them for around $90 on Ebay.

 

[NOT_Bill_Gates]

Excellent idea. I had already resigned myself to that fact - this card is not for me. While I appreciate having a server-level card and I have had pretty good luck with Adaptec in the past, I don't think their quality is where it used to be back in the SCSI days . . . Also, I was never really keen on using my SATA 3 drives in SATA 2 mode, even though I know that is not the rate-limiting step for my FreeNAS purposes. So, if ANYONE knows of someone who could use the Adaptec 2805 card, they can have it -- just pay the shipping! Can't get more fair than that, eh?

I have already been shopping for cards and haven't found the right deal yet, but I'll keep looking. I'm glad that the USB 3.0 issue is not an issue with my system. Once the Adaptec card is out of the equation, it seems just fine (except I have no recognizable drives). Any ideas why the Adaptec card reported No SMART data and why the lights on the hot swap caddies were going haywire? Doesn't make much sense to me.

 

[Fuganater]

The card works fine in a server, just not when you are using FreeNAS as your OS.

 

[NOT_Bill_Gates]

Right, it probably does work fine as a RAID card, but I'm saying that from the Adaptec configuration utility and the BIOS, it does not recognize SMART data from my drives. Granted, they are connected via MiniSAS to a backplane hard drive cage so that I can have them as hot swap, but I still would have expected the SMART info to come through from the drives to the card, regardless of the operating system. Even if I were setting this up in a different server via hardware RAID rather than my plans for zfs on FreeNAS, I still would not be happy about that!

 

[solarisguy]

There was a thread that may be of interest to you
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/low-priced-lsi-raid-expansion-cards.39041/