Re: LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i hangs system at boot
On 5/29/2012 7:09 AM, Ramon Hofer wrote:
> On Sun, 20 May 2012 21:37:19 -0500
> Stan Hoeppner <stan@hardwarefreak.com> wrote:
>
> (...)
>
>> Does the mobo BIOS show the disk device? If not, does the 9240 BIOS
>> show the disk device, RAID level, and its size?
>>
>> What we need to figure out is whether this is a BIOS problem at this
>> point or a Debian installer kernel driver problem.
>
> I have finally found some time to work on the problem:
>
> I set up a raid1 in the hba bios. I couldn't install onto it with the
> supermicro mb.
>
> Then I mounted the lsi hba into my old server with an Asus mb (can't
> remember which one it is, must have to check it at home...). It (almost)
> works like a charm.
> The only issue is that I can't enter the hba BIOS when it's mounted in
> the Asus mb. But when I put it back into the Supermicro mb I can access
> it again. Very strange!
This behavior isn't strange. Just about every mobo BIOS has an option
to ignore or load option ROMs. On your SuperMicro board this is
controlled by the setting "AddOn ROM Display Mode" under the "Boot
Feature" menu. Your ASUS board likely has a similar feature that is
currently disabled, preventing the LSI option ROM from being loaded.
> But apart from that I could install Debian onto the raid1. Then I set
This was on the ASUS board correct? Were you able to boot the RAID1
device after install? If so this indeed would be strange as you should
not be able to boot from the HBA if its ROM isn't loaded.
> the bios to use the disks as jbods and installed Debian gain to a drive
> directly attached to the mb sata controller.
> With the original squeeze kernel the disks attached to the hba weren't
> visible. But after updating to the bpo kernel I can fdisk them
> separately and put it into a raid5 (in the end I want to apply the 500G
> partition method Cameleon suggested).
This experience with the ASUS board leads me to wonder if disabling the
option ROM and INT19 on the SM board would allow everything to function
properly. Try that before you take the board to the dealer for
flashing. Assuming you've deleted any BIOS configured RAID devices in
the HBA BIOS already and all drives are configured for JBOD mode, drop
the HBA back into the SM board, go into the SM BIOS, set "PCI Slot X
Option ROM" to "DISABLED" where X is the number of the PCIe slot in
which the LSI HBA is inserted. Set "Interrupt 19 Capture" to
"DISABLED". Save settings and reboot.
You should now see the same behavior as on the ASUS, including the HBA
BIOS not showing up during the boot process. Which I'm thinking is the
key to it working on the ASUS as the ROM code is never resident. Thus
it is not causing problems with kernel driver, which is apparently
assuming the 9240 series ROM will not be resident.
This loading of the option ROM code is what some would consider the
difference between "HBA RAID mode" and "HBA JBOD mode".
>> Did you already flash the C7P67 BIOS to the latest version? I can't
>> recall.
>
> I have tried to do that but it was quite strange.
> I created a freedos usb stick with unetbootin and copied the files for
> the update from supermicro into the stick. I did exactly what the
> readmes told me. But when I did it the first time there was no output
> of the flash process and the directory where the supermicro files were
> located on the stick was empty.
> When I tried to do the procedure again it complains that I have to
> first install version 1.
Unfortunately flashing mobo BIOS is still not always an uneventful nor
routine process, even in 2012.
> I will now bring it to my dealer who can do the BIOS update for me.
>
> And I will write to Supermicro if they are aware of the issue.
Try what I mention above before doing either of these things.
Good luck.
--
Stan
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