mfi0 timeout error zfs boot mount problem

[Jurgen Weber]

Guys

Some more details on this, some insight would be greatly appreciated.

As my day wore on trying to get this zpool to import or mount I have 
learnt a few things. I think over time this issue has came about as more 
and more data was added to the file systems.

Some further details:

Its a 8 disk raidz pool that the system boots from as well. The disk are 
all 2TB.
The server has 16GB Of RAM, I notcied the day before this happen the 
server was struggling with its RAM griding to a halt and dumping its RAM.
The issue is not hardware because I found another server (same one) 
swapped the harddrives out took another 8GB of RAM and I have the same 
problem.
The main data file systems have dedup and gzip compression on.

I have booted from open/Oracle Solars 11 adn attempted to import and the 
Solaris live CD will not import either. In the Solaris system the disk 
detach from the system.

I get the feeling that ZFS is hitting some root limit when attempting to 
mount and its not finishing the job.

Thanks

Jurgen

On 19/10/2012 10:29 AM, Jürgen Weber wrote:
> Team
>
> I have googled around for a solution and I see a lot of posts about 
> firmware versions and patches for FreeBSD 8.*.
>
> I have a FreeBSD 9.1rc1 system, which was beta1 orginally and has been 
> running for months.
>
> Now it will not boot, I get the following:
>
> "Trying to mount root from zfs:tank/root [].....
> mfi0: COMMAND 0Xffffff8000cb83530 TIMEOUT AFTER xxx SECONDS
> (this just repeats).
>
> I have not seen this error before during normal runtime, _only_ during 
> boot.
>
> Originally when I had the problem I could boot off a USB stick 
> (9.1beta1 or rc1), run a 'zpool import -f tank' and it would work on 
> the livecd. Rebooting and the main system would work.
>
> This time this work around does not work for me. When I am on the USB 
> stick I can run a 'zpool import' and all of the disk are recognised, 
> the pool is recognised and the file system is healthy.
>
> The Card is a H700 PERC, with 12.10.3 firmware in a Dell R515.
> Running FreeBSD 9.1-RC1, latest zfs and zpool versions.
>
> I have tried disabling the cache (mfiutil cache xxx disable). I have 
> also gone into the Card settings and changed under advanced settings 
> "adaptive forward read" to "read only".
>
> Any help, appreciated.
>
> Thanks
>