Booting a SuperMicro Superserver

[Bernd Walter]

On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 02:25:29PM -0400, Allan Jude wrote:
> On 2014-08-12 14:09, Barney Cordoba wrote:
> > The bios only gives you one choice for "HDD". You can't select one of the 4 drives to boot from. You can specify USB or CD or HDD, but Not HDD2 or HDD3.
> > 
> > BC
> > 
> > 
> > On Tuesday, August 12, 2014 1:16 PM, John Nielsen <lists at jnielsen.net> wrote:
> >  
> > 
> > 
> > On Aug 12, 2014, at 10:32 AM, Barney Cordoba <barney_cordoba at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >> A continuing issue (with 9.1 previously and now 10) is that FreeBSD occasionally (or always) seems to boot from the 2nd installed drive
> >> rather than the first. I'd be happy to debug this, but I have no idea if it's bootcode or a BIOS issue. Supermicro pleads innocent, but their bios
> >> guys are hard to work with and fairly arrogant if you don't specifically isolate something.
> >>
> >> The scenario occurs when ada0 is upgraded and has an incompatible kernel with other code on drive ada1.  (note that ada1 is a backup of the pre-upgrade ada0, so it's fstab points to ada0 for mount points). The system will boot and then modules will fail to load. It loads the kernel from
> >>   ada1 and then mounts partitions from ada0; old kernel and newer modules.
> >>
> >> The problem is resolved by popping the 2nd drive. So there is nothing wrong with ada0 to cause it to bounce to ada1.
> >>
> >> My question: What would cause the system to boot from ada1 instead of ada0? Bios or Bootcode?
> > 
> > BIOS, most likely. If the disk controller in question is onboard you should be able to specify which disk(s) and what order they will be booted from. If not, you'll need to just say <disk controller> in the BIOS boot order then go to the controllers BIOS to say which disk(s) to boot from and in what order. I have recent experience with a SuperMicro box and an LSI controller; the latter allows you to specify a (b)oot drive and an (a)lternate. Yes, b comes before a. :)
> > 
> 
> There is usually a second menu after you select 'HDD' in the boot order
> menu, something like 'HDD Boot Priority' that lets you select the
> correct disk to boot from
> 
> http://s1121.photobucket.com/user/SleeperPro/media/BIOSBoot.jpg.html
> 
> So after you select 'HDD" in the 'boot device priority' menu, go to the
> 'hard disk drives' menu and set the order of the drives.

I've also seen BIOS to scan complete boot order HDD for GPT and then MBR.
Noticed this when seting up a gmirror server in the old way:
Do lazy install on disk0 and boot.
setup disk1 as gmirror/dedicated disk with it's fake MBR.
Shutdown and physically swap disks, then gmirror the lazy installation
disk.
But after swapping disks the BIOS then bootet from disk1 with GPT, although
the new gmirror/MBR disk0 was first in boot order.
After gmirror sync disk1 the BIOS booted from disk0, so it really was
the GPT why it prefered booting from second disk in bootorder.
Think it was a Intel board, but can't say for sure.

-- 
B.Walter <bernd at bwct.de> http://www.bwct.de
Modbus/TCP Ethernet I/O Baugruppen, ARM basierte FreeBSD Rechner uvm.