LSI-MegaRAID 150-4 BTX Halted on 5.4, 5.5, 6.1

John Baldwin jhb at freebsd.org
Tue Aug 22 21:10:46 UTC 2006


On Tuesday 22 August 2006 16:44, Carroll Kong wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: John Baldwin [mailto:jhb at freebsd.org] 
> > Sent: Tuesday, August 22, 2006 3:07 PM
> > To: freebsd-hackers at freebsd.org
> > Cc: Carroll Kong
> > Subject: Re: LSI-MegaRAID 150-4 BTX Halted on 5.4, 5.5, 6.1
> > 
> > On Tuesday 22 August 2006 00:12, Carroll Kong wrote:
> > > I am trying to install FreeBSD on a new Intel Server 
> > SE7230NH1-E using 
> > > a PCI-X riser card on the Intel S1475 chassis, pentium D 
> > 3.2 gig dual 
> > > core proc 940.
> > > 
> > > Whenever I try to install using the CDROM for 5.4, 5.5, and 
> > 6.1... BTX 
> > > halts immediately.
> > > 
> > > The second I remove the card, the system boots up fine.  In fact, I 
> > > was able to install 6.1 on one of the SATA disks on there.  
> > However, 
> > > once I put the card back, BTX Halts.
> > > 
> > > BTX Halts even if I remove all logical drives on the array 
> > (making it 
> > > completely empty and it does not show up as a disk at all 
> > in the BTX Bios).
> > > I even disabled the card's BIOS mode, and it still halts.
> > > 
> > > Since FreeBSD 5.4 supports the LSI Megaraid 150-4, I 
> > suspect it might 
> > > be the riser card doing interesting things.
> > > 
> > > I highly doubt hardware is the issue since I was able to install 
> > > CentOS without a hitch (eek, I really don't want to use it 
> > though... 
> > > unless Vmware can run a freebsd box from it).  Of course, the 
> > > possibility of Linux ignoring potentially critical errors 
> > is another 
> > > possibility.  :)
> > > 
> > > Just a wild guess here since I have no real hardware 
> > programming experience.
> > > I really think it is the riser card probably doing some 
> > different alignment.
> > > I cannot test the card without the riser (it's a weird board that 
> > > needs the riser card to 'automatically' mix to the right 
> > modes I think?).
> > > 
> > > Here is the BTX dump.  It is copied verbatim from a screen shot.  
> > > (hopefully I wrote it out exactly)
> > > 
> > > int=0000000d err=00000013 efl=00030402 eip=0000554d
> > > eax=00000204 ebx=00000000 ecx=00000001 edx=00001421
> > > esi=00000008 edi=00000008 ebp=00000000 esp=0000040c cs=f000 ds=3ec9 
> > > es=44b0 fs=0000 gs=0000 ss=9e4c
> > > cs:eip=e6 e4 e4 71 c3 53 b7 00-eb 08 53 b7 01 eb 03 53
> > >        b7 02 9c fa 8a d8 8a c4-e8 e3 ff 80 ff 00 75 04
> > > ss:esp=36 54 4a 91 00 00 96 02-b4 11 05 00 44 1d 05 00
> > >        f8 48 09 00 84 9c 00 00-00 00 00 00 b4 11 05 00
> > > 
> > > So, I CAN boot into FreeBSD 6.1 if I remove the card.  If I need to 
> > > recompile something, it should be doable.  Thanks in advance guys!
> > 
> > Hmmm.  This is quite odd.  The instruction is one that should 
> > be allowed:
> > 
> > 00000000  E6E4              out 0xe4,al
> > 00000002  E471              in al,0x71
> > 00000004  C3                ret
> > 
> > My guess is that somehow the TSS has been corrupted.  Many 
> > years ago Mike Smith was running into weirdness with a RAID 
> > BIOS (not amr(4) I don't think, maybe mlx(4)) that was 
> > somehow corrupting the TSS.  I don't know if he ever managed 
> > to solve it.
> > 
> > --
> > John Baldwin
> 
> Forgive me for my ignorance, but what is a TSS?  Also, I told the card to
> disable it's BIOS during bootup, and it still zonked.  I even removed all
> the logical drives (so there was no RAID array) just to see if it would
> boot, it would still zonk!  Only if I physically removed it, would it work.
> I figured, at that point why would BTX even care about the RAID controller?
> It's not being asked to boot from it anymore.
> 
> Oddly enough, CentOS is working great on it now.  I have 2 Vmware guests
> running... you guessed it -- FreeBSD 6.1.  However, if this TSS sounds like
> a hardware issue, I will probably have to do more burn-in tests to ensure it
> is not just the linux driver "ignoring" something.
> 
> I also wonder if this would have been easier if I just went with the LSI
> Megaraid SCSI controller instead.  I went with the SATA version since it was
> supposedly well supported by FreeBSD 5.4.  Although, I am more likely to
> blame the riser card for confusing FreeBSD, I do not believe I have a
> hardware issue like the other gentlemen.  (I have reinstalled the OSes and
> guest OSes multiple times).

The TSS is a software thing.  For it to be corrupted means random memory
corruption.  The difference between FreeBSD and Linux is that FreeBSD has 
the /boot/loader which runs in protected mode and runs the BIOS in vm86 mode, 
whereas the Linux boot stays in real mode until it starts up the kernel.

-- 
John Baldwin


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