BDMcGrew
Dabbler
- Joined
- Sep 22, 2015
- Messages
- 49
Good evening... I'm facing an interestingly characterized set of problems at the moment. I realize this isn't specific to FreeNAS per say but hopefully someone can shed a bit of light on my misfortune before I just lose my mind! Over in the thread "Confused about that LSI Card? Join the crowd ..." located here, jgreco specifically recommends the Supermicro SC846 with IBM M1015 (LSI 9211-8i) controllers. Needing to move a hardware platform, I bought 3 of these off of eBay from a reputable seller that's moved hundreds of them as well as 3 LSI Logic 9211-8i cards from another reputable US seller. The Supermicro boxes came with some blah blah Adaptec card which I had no intentions of using and all arrived on Monday.
I tore the first box apart and dropped in an i340-T4 and the LSI cards. Booted FreeDOS from a flash drive and cross-flashed the LSI to IT mode and all was good, FreeNAS booted and installed just fine. While watching /var/log/messages I started installing hard drives one a time making sure each was seen and all was good until I hit a bad slot on the backplane. Fast forward and machine #1 appears to have 2 bad slots on the backplane. WTF, can we say untested? Nope - not it!
Lather, rinse, repeat for machine #2 and find 3 bad slots on the backplane. I contacted the vendor and 2 replacement backplanes are being sent as I type but I was assured that out of the hundreds of machines he'd sold there had only been a "couple" bad backplanes. Odd.
I decided to try things a bit different with machine #3. Boot up stock out of the box to check integrity and it looks good. Add hard drives 6 at a time and check for tasty goodness until all 24 drives are installed and seen by the Adaptec controller. Boot FreeDOS and I see 24 hard drives. Boot up a sandbox copy of FreeNAS and yup, I see 24 hard drives. Guess the backplane is good.
Shut down, drop in LSI card, with cables unhooked, cross-flash to IT mode and all looks good. Connect hard drives and try to boot and bam, no good.
1) The controller set at the Initializing stage for about an hour (ok, I didn't time it).
2) When it did get past the Initializing phase and showed connected devices, it only showed itself.
3) Boot up FreeNAS and hung at ""run_interrupt_drivern_hooks: still waiting after 300 seconds for mps_startup"" and I'm locked hard.
(Machine #1 is down but on Machine #2 and 3):
4) Pull all the drives out, boot FreeNAS and add drives one at a time and all the machines exhibit 2 or 3 bad bays on the backplane. Populate those bays and I'm dead on reboot. Leave them empty and life is good.
5) Swap the LSI controller out and put the Adaptec back in and all 24 bays/drives are detected by the controller and by FreeNAS.
I don't get it.
I find it hard to believe I have 3 bad backplanes but, I suppose, it's possible???
Could it be 3 bad LSI controller cards??? Eh, maybe? I can't seem to find any diagnostics for the cards.
I doubt it's the hard drives or carriers, I swapped them all around and I know the disks are good - they are new but were all previously tested on known good working hardware.
I'm going on 36 hours of bench time and have nothing to show for it save for high blood pressure and frustrations. I thought I was doing the right thing buying recommended hardware (which happened to suit my needs perfectly) and I read everything I could find on the backplane, LSI cross-flashing, etc. Did I maybe miss something? If so, what am I missing?
Do I dare even attempt to bring up a box with the Adaptec cards? I've read so many bad things about them that I'm reluctant to even ask such a question.
I'm just at a total loss right now and have no idea what to do next or where to go next...
I'm totally open to ideas if anyone has any and like I said, I know it's not _specific to FreeNAS but kind of specific to hardware preferred by FreeNAS, no?
Thanks!
-b
I tore the first box apart and dropped in an i340-T4 and the LSI cards. Booted FreeDOS from a flash drive and cross-flashed the LSI to IT mode and all was good, FreeNAS booted and installed just fine. While watching /var/log/messages I started installing hard drives one a time making sure each was seen and all was good until I hit a bad slot on the backplane. Fast forward and machine #1 appears to have 2 bad slots on the backplane. WTF, can we say untested? Nope - not it!
Lather, rinse, repeat for machine #2 and find 3 bad slots on the backplane. I contacted the vendor and 2 replacement backplanes are being sent as I type but I was assured that out of the hundreds of machines he'd sold there had only been a "couple" bad backplanes. Odd.
I decided to try things a bit different with machine #3. Boot up stock out of the box to check integrity and it looks good. Add hard drives 6 at a time and check for tasty goodness until all 24 drives are installed and seen by the Adaptec controller. Boot FreeDOS and I see 24 hard drives. Boot up a sandbox copy of FreeNAS and yup, I see 24 hard drives. Guess the backplane is good.
Shut down, drop in LSI card, with cables unhooked, cross-flash to IT mode and all looks good. Connect hard drives and try to boot and bam, no good.
1) The controller set at the Initializing stage for about an hour (ok, I didn't time it).
2) When it did get past the Initializing phase and showed connected devices, it only showed itself.
3) Boot up FreeNAS and hung at ""run_interrupt_drivern_hooks: still waiting after 300 seconds for mps_startup"" and I'm locked hard.
(Machine #1 is down but on Machine #2 and 3):
4) Pull all the drives out, boot FreeNAS and add drives one at a time and all the machines exhibit 2 or 3 bad bays on the backplane. Populate those bays and I'm dead on reboot. Leave them empty and life is good.
5) Swap the LSI controller out and put the Adaptec back in and all 24 bays/drives are detected by the controller and by FreeNAS.
I don't get it.
I find it hard to believe I have 3 bad backplanes but, I suppose, it's possible???
Could it be 3 bad LSI controller cards??? Eh, maybe? I can't seem to find any diagnostics for the cards.
I doubt it's the hard drives or carriers, I swapped them all around and I know the disks are good - they are new but were all previously tested on known good working hardware.
I'm going on 36 hours of bench time and have nothing to show for it save for high blood pressure and frustrations. I thought I was doing the right thing buying recommended hardware (which happened to suit my needs perfectly) and I read everything I could find on the backplane, LSI cross-flashing, etc. Did I maybe miss something? If so, what am I missing?
Do I dare even attempt to bring up a box with the Adaptec cards? I've read so many bad things about them that I'm reluctant to even ask such a question.
I'm just at a total loss right now and have no idea what to do next or where to go next...
I'm totally open to ideas if anyone has any and like I said, I know it's not _specific to FreeNAS but kind of specific to hardware preferred by FreeNAS, no?
Thanks!
-b
