No way around it, this is going to be long. Let me first start by saying that all the hardware I reference in this post was already in place and working before things went wrong, so it's not about new hardware.
The hardware: Supermicro X7DBR-E motherboard w/6 SATA ports, 32GB RAM, (10) 3TB HD's, LSI SAS9220-8i (IBM M1015) RAID controller. 16GB boot USB key.
What I'm using it for: It currently has about 15TB usable space of which 10TB has files. Granted they are files I could afford to lose, but I'd rather not if they can be preserved.
The symptom: I noticed it wasn't online one day, so I tried accessing it via the web interface (non-responsive), then locally at the machine itself (monitor wouldn't come up). I rebooted the machine and was greeted with 4 or 5 lines of things that couldn't be found (can't remember exactly now and I can't get back to that point). Somewhere in the process of re-installing, the server's BIOS got reset back to default. Usually not an issue as I have set BIOS on dozens of other servers in our data center and am pretty familiar with the settings overall.
The current problem: 6 of the drives are hooked up to the motherboard's SATA, the other 4 are hooked to the RAID controller, as they have always been, I didn't change that. Now, however, I can only see the 6 drives on the motherboard, and not the 4 on the RAID controller.
What I've done: I think I have tried every possible combination of BIOS settings pertaining to the SATA and PCI that seemed pertinent to the problem. With the SASFLSH utility, I get a confirmation that the 4 drives are indeed working and connected to the RAID controller, I just can't get them to show up anywhere.
When I try to install FreeNAS from a USB drive, it gets to a point about loading something from root dev/msdos/freenas or something like that, then hangs. I think it might be because not all of the hardware is present. In any case, I think my first priority is to get the other 4 drives to be recognized.
I have spent dozens of hours on this so far and am not sure what else to try. Anybody have any thoughts about a direction I should take?
Jeff
The hardware: Supermicro X7DBR-E motherboard w/6 SATA ports, 32GB RAM, (10) 3TB HD's, LSI SAS9220-8i (IBM M1015) RAID controller. 16GB boot USB key.
What I'm using it for: It currently has about 15TB usable space of which 10TB has files. Granted they are files I could afford to lose, but I'd rather not if they can be preserved.
The symptom: I noticed it wasn't online one day, so I tried accessing it via the web interface (non-responsive), then locally at the machine itself (monitor wouldn't come up). I rebooted the machine and was greeted with 4 or 5 lines of things that couldn't be found (can't remember exactly now and I can't get back to that point). Somewhere in the process of re-installing, the server's BIOS got reset back to default. Usually not an issue as I have set BIOS on dozens of other servers in our data center and am pretty familiar with the settings overall.
The current problem: 6 of the drives are hooked up to the motherboard's SATA, the other 4 are hooked to the RAID controller, as they have always been, I didn't change that. Now, however, I can only see the 6 drives on the motherboard, and not the 4 on the RAID controller.
What I've done: I think I have tried every possible combination of BIOS settings pertaining to the SATA and PCI that seemed pertinent to the problem. With the SASFLSH utility, I get a confirmation that the 4 drives are indeed working and connected to the RAID controller, I just can't get them to show up anywhere.
When I try to install FreeNAS from a USB drive, it gets to a point about loading something from root dev/msdos/freenas or something like that, then hangs. I think it might be because not all of the hardware is present. In any case, I think my first priority is to get the other 4 drives to be recognized.
I have spent dozens of hours on this so far and am not sure what else to try. Anybody have any thoughts about a direction I should take?
Jeff
