Upgrade from 8.2-STABLE to 9.0-RELEASE wedges on SuperMicro H8DGiF-based system

[Freddie Cash]

On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 11:25 AM, Freddie Cash <fjwcash at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've upgraded the BIOS to v2.00 same as betadrive.  However, using the
> exact same BIOS settings as betadrive causes the SATA controllers and
> onboard igb(4) interfaces to not be detected.  At all.  Nothing in
> dmesg or pciconf.  Resetting BIOS settings to "Failsafe settings"
> shows the SATA controllers and onboard NICs.  Now the fun begins to
> figure out which setting in the BIOS is causing this.

Looks like the BIOS upgrade to v2.00a solved the stability issues with
FreeBSD 9.0.  The box has been up for over 24 hours now, finished a
backups run overnight, ran multiple concurrent find processes on the
ZFS pool, without any hiccups or issues.

There's still something wonky with this BIOS and FreeBSD 9.0 and the
older AOC-USAS-L8i SATA controllers, as I had to resort to the
"Failsafe Settings".  Using the exact same BIOS settings as the other
box causes all PCIe devices to disappear.

Since the box is working correctly now, as far as we can see, we'll be
leaving it like this until the summer when we have more downtime
available for testing.

Thanks for listening everyone, and offering advice.  For now, we'll
consider this issue "solved".  :)
-- 
Freddie Cash
fjwcash at gmail.com