FreeBSD 11.x fails to boot w/ SAS3 4Kn HDD and LSISAS3008 on SuperMicro X10DRH-iT

Tue Mar 13 12:25:59 UTC 2018

As it turns out, it seems EFI must be specified as the boot environment as
opposed to legacy or BIOS+EFI. Setting the boot environment to EFI only
resulted in successful system boot.

Thanks for the replies. The answer came from Allan Jude on Twitter.

On Mon, Mar 12, 2018 at 6:18 PM Rick Miller <vrwmiller at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Thanks in advance to anyone that might be able to help. I subscribed to
> freebsd-geom@ so that the list did not need to "reply-all". Having
> trouble getting FreeBSD 11-STABLE @ r329011 to boot from SAS3 4Kn HDDs via
> LSISAS 3008 HBA on a SuperMicro X10DRH-iT motherboard after an apparent
> installation. All internal media (including all other disks attached to the
> HBA) were removed to eliminate other storage being the reason the system
> won't boot. This occurs specifically in CSM mode, but the preference is to
> boot via UEFI mode instead.
>
> Anyway...booting the machine via the memstick image demonstrates the
> LSISAS 3008 controller attaching via mpr(4) (whose manpage describes the
> controller being supported[1]):
>
> mpr0 at pci0:3:0:0: class=0x010700 card=0x080815d9 chip=0x00971000 rev=0x02
> hdr=0x00
>   vendor   = 'LSI Logic / Symbios Logic'
>   device   = 'SAS3008 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-3'
>   class     = mass storage
>   subclass = SAS
>
> The only inserted disk attaches as da0 as illustrated by dmesg:
>
> ses0: pass0,da0: Elemne t descriptor: 'Slot00'
> da0 at mpr0 bus 0 scbus0 target 8 lun 0
> ses0: pass0,da0: SAS Device Slot Element: 1 Phys at Slot 0
> ses0:  phy 0: SAS device type 1 id 0
> ses0:  phy 0: protocols: initiator( None ) Target( SSP )
> ses0:  phy 0: parent 500304801e870bff addr 5000c500a012814d
> da0:  <SEAGATE ST2000NX0263 K004> Fixed Direct Access SPC-4 SCSI device
> da0:  Serial Number $serial_number
> da0: 1200.000MB/s transfers
> da0: Command queueing enabled
> da0: 1907729MB (488378648 4096 byte sectors)
>
> The original goal was to boot via zfs root, but when that failed,
> subsequent installations used the "Auto (UFS) option" to partition the
> disk. For example, the first installation gpart'd the disk as:
>
> # gpart show da0
> =>            6  488378635  da0  GPT   (1.8T)
>                 6              128      1  freebsd-boot  (512K)
>             134  487325568      2  freebsd-ufs  (1.8T)
> 487325702      1048576      3  freebsd-swap  (4.0G)
> 488374278            4363          - free -   (17M)
>
> The result was a reboot loop. When the system reached the point of reading
> the disk, it just rebooted and continued doing so. There was no loader or
> beastie menu. Thus, thinking that it could be the partition layout
> requirements of the 4Kn disks, it was gpart'd like the below[2][3]. This
> was done by exiting to the shell during the partition phase of bsdinstall
> and manually gpart'ing the disk according to the below, mounting da0p2 at
> /mnt and placing an fstab at /tmp/bsdinstall_etc/fstab that included mount
> entries for /dev/da0p2 at / and /dev/da0p3 as swap.
>
> # gpart show da0
> =>            6  488378635  da0  GPT   (1.8T)
>                 6                34          - free -  (136K)
>               40              512      1  freebsd-boot  (2.0M)
>             552  419430400      2  freebsd-ufs  (1.6T)
> 419430952      1048576      3  freebsd-swap  (4.0G)
> 420479528    67899113          - free -   (259G)
>
> When configured as such, the system rebooted at the completion of the
> install and appeared to roll through the boot order, which specifies the
> HDD first, then CD/DVD, then network. It did attempt to boot via network,
> but is irrelevant here.
>
> All the hardware is alleged to be supported by FreeBSD as best I can tell
> and OS installation apparently works. I'm at a loss as to why the OS won't
> boot. Does someone have feedback or input that may expose why it doesn't
> boot?
>
> FWIW, a RHEL7 install was also attempted, which also does not boot.
>
> [1]
> https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=mpr&apropos=0&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+11.1-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html
> [2]
> https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hardware/2013-September/007380.html
> [3] http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html
>
> --
> Take care
> Rick Miller
>
-- 
Take care
Rick Miller