MFI Driver Behavior

Chris Forgeron cforgeron at acsi.ca
Tue Mar 8 18:51:35 UTC 2011


This may be of moderate use, but I have the exact same issue with the Dell PERC H700 and FreeBSD.  I've tried 8.1, 8.2, and 9.0-CURRENT with similar results as you have had. I eventually gave up, and will reuse these in a Windows box, or I'll sell them on ebay. 

However, I haven't had any issues with a LSI1068 based controller that uses the same mfi driver. 

I'm also having good luck with the msp driver for the newer LSI2008

The Areca cards work well under FreeBSD - It's one of the cards I started investigating after I realized my PERC H700 wasn't a good option, and they provide source code as well. 

I'm mildly interested in trying to fix it, can program C, and I do have access to the card, but I'd need someone to help get me started, as I haven't done much with FreeBSD other than hack some kernel compiles and play with some custom NFS changes. 


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-freebsd-drivers at freebsd.org [mailto:owner-freebsd-drivers at freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Erich Weiler
Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2011 2:46 PM
To: Jonathan Stewart
Cc: freebsd-drivers at freebsd.org
Subject: Re: MFI Driver Behavior

This was not resolved, although I tried in vain to get it to be more stable for over a month.  The Perc H700 and H800 controllers do not work reliably with any version of FreeBSD.  It's an MFI driver issue, such that the driver locks the controller temporarily under heavy disk load, but there seems to be little interest in fixing it.

I thought at first it was a C-states issue, but then it locked again a week later.

I punted and got an Adaptec controller, which is better supported under FreeBSD.  Maybe they will make the MFI driver work better with these controllers one day, but I don't know when that will happen.  Which is a bummer because more and more folks are buying these Perc H700/H800 controllers from Dell.

On 03/08/11 10:38, Jonathan Stewart wrote:
> [Please CC me I'm not on this list]
> 
> Erich Weiler wrote:
>>> We are testing a new theory.  We believe that the C-states and C1E  
>>> control on this chipset (in the Dell R610), which are configurable 
>>> in the BIOS, are affecting the controller in some way.
>>> We are disabling them and trying again.  I'll post results soon.
>> After disabling C-states and CIE in the BIOS on our R610, the Perc
>> H800 controller now appears stable.  My ZFS filesystem appears 
>> stable.  Life seems good.
>>
>> I wonder what those items in the BIOS are doing in relation to the 
>> kernel to cause this.
> 
> Have you had any further issues with this?  I just updated 2 of my 
> systems to FreeBSD ???.net 8.2-STABLE FreeBSD 8.2-STABLE #2 r219138: Tue Mar  1
> 13:42:29 EST 2011     root@???.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SERENITY
> amd64
> 
> from 8-stable sometime around 8 release and just had to have the 
> datacenter hit the reset button to bring the machine back.
> 
> I'm reluctant to take this machine to current but if that fixes the 
> problem I can do it.  The other option is calling the data center and 
> having them change the BIOS settings for me but that is also something 
> I would rather not do.
> 
> Thanks,
> Jonathan
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