[OmniOS-discuss] Intel C600 driver issue

[Marion Hakanson]

Hi Dan (and sjorge),

Thanks for the feedback.

Yep, that's the conclusion I was coming to myself.  When I saw the BIOS
setting for "ESRT2" mode, which claimed it was an LSI derivative, I dared
to entertain a glimmer of hope for a little while (:-).

We actually have an LSI SAS HBA in this system, connected to an external
JBOD.  Can't really justify using one of its 4TB SAS disks as a boot drive,
as those are all dedicated to other tasks.

The SCU can be "upgraded" with optional "RAID Upgrade Key" thingies that
you plug into a socket in the motherboard.  Some of them enable SAS-mode,
among other things, but I suspect we'd still be stuck with something that
doesn't speak to the mpt_sas, etc. drivers in illumos.

There is actually an AHCI SATA controller onboard too, but the disk
backplane in this 4-node chassis seems to be directly wired (via a
bridge-board) to the SCU.  The one exception is Port 0 on the system's
AHCI SATA controller, which allegedly goes to a special "DOM" socket.
The system came with an Intel DC S3700 SSD for its boot drive, regular
SATA unit, and there doesn't seem to be space in this jam-packed
motherboard + chassis to connect it to one of the other onboard
AHCI SATA ports.

Hmm, Plan B?  Those DOM's aren't cheap. Would 16GB be sufficient?
  http://www.directron.com/d150qvlintel16.html
Can dump/swap zvols be on a non-mirrored (raidz3) external pool?

Failing that, Plan C:  Probably we'll have to use ZFS-on-Linux.
Oh, the disappointment....

Thanks and regards,

Marion


=========================================================================
Subject: Re: [OmniOS-discuss] Intel C600 driver issue
From: Dan McDonald <danmcd at omniti.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 09:42:52 -0400 (06:42 PDT)
To: Marion Hakanson <hakansom at ohsu.edu>
Cc: "omnios-discuss at lists.omniti.com" <omnios-discuss at lists.omniti.com>

I believe the "difficult" one, as you put it, is the SCU (ahh, you even call 
it out in your PCI scans).

Illumos has no driver for the C600 SCU, so you're out of luck. There was a 
prototype rumored to be floating around, but given most people ponied up for 
an LSI SAS HBA, which performed better, there was not a strong community push 
to get it up and running.

Sorry I don't have better news,
Dan

Sent from my iPhone (typos, autocorrect, and all)

> On Sep 17, 2014, at 3:12 AM, Marion Hakanson <hakansom at ohsu.edu> wrote:
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> I'm trying to install OmniOS 151010u onto an Intel S2600WP motherboard,
> and the OmniOS live image is not finding the boot/root drive.  This
> system is in a 4-motherboard chassis with a disk backplane on the front,
> and each of the 4 motherboards gets some drive slots on that backplane.
> 
> In this particular case, there's a single SSD for boot/root, and while
> the motherboard includes two SATA controllers, the SSD is plumbed to
> the "difficult" one, which has two modes in the BIOS:
> 
> (1) RSTe mode (default);  Functions in SATA pass-through mode, according
>    to the BIOS blurb.  Windows would use the "iastor" driver.  In this
>    mode, the device describes itself (in "prtconf -Dv" or "scanpci") as:
>    C602 chipset 4-Port SATA Storage Control Unit
> 
> (2) ERST2 mode;  Functions like an LSI-something SAS/SATA RAID controller.
>    Windows/Linux would supposedly use the "megasr" driver.  In this
>    mode, the device describes itself (in "prtconf -Dv" or "scanpci") as:
>    C600/X79 series chipset 4-Port SATA Storage Control Unit
> 
> Unfortunately, OmniOS drivers do not attach to this device.  I've tried
> some manual driver suggestions, all of which fail to attach, in either
> of the above two modes:
> 
>  update_drv -a -i '"pci8086,358f"' mpt
>  update_drv -a -i '"pci8086,358f"' mega_sas
>  update_drv -a -i '"pci8086,358f"' mr_sas
>  update_drv -a -i '"pci8086,358f"' mpt_sas
>  update_drv -a -i '"pci8086,358f"' ahci
> 
> I've also tried pci8085,106b, which is a device-id alias listed in
> the "prtconf -Dv" output.
> 
> Has anyone in OmniOS- or illumo-land gotten the OS to talk to this
> storage controller?  Suggestions?  Linux appears to use the "isci"
> driver for this device.
> 
> Thanks and regards,
> 
> Marion
> 
> 
> 
> 
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