Dell XPS 8940 SATA and NVMe disk controller not recognized

[David Christensen]

On 4/3/21 12:25 PM, Karl Dunn wrote:
> I have new Dell XPS 8940 that came with Windows 10 Home installed.  I 
> have created two partitions for FreeBSD, one on its NMVe 256GB SSD, and 
> one on its WD 1TB HD.
> 
> For now, I have 12.2-RELEASE-p4 GENERIC on a USB memstick, so I can do 
> some limited testing.
> 
> FreeBSD 12.2 does not recognize the SATA/RAID controller, which I assume 
> is resposible (in Win10) for accising both drives.
> 
> The relevant pcoconf line for the controlleris:
> 
> none7 at pci0:0:23:0: class=0x010400 card=0x09c51028 chip=0x06d68086 
> rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
>     vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
>     class      = mass storage
>     subclass   = RAID
> 
> Because no net devices work (for FreeBSD), I put a pcie-x1 net card in 
> the machine to get access, 15 bucks to Ebay, works great.  I can't get 
> the NVIDIA graphics card to work right, but that and the net devices are 
> issues for sometime later.
> 
> Here is a URL for info I collected from the machine, including from the 
> hw-probe utility:
> 
>   http://home.hiwaay.net/~kldunn/XPS_8940_info.html
> 
> That has a link for the results of hw-probe, the outputs of pciconf -lv 
> and dmesg, and the content of /var/log/messages and rc.conf.
> 
> The hw-probe report claims that Linux supports the SATA/RAID controller 
> in 'drivers/ata/ahci.c', but that no version of FreeBSD knows about it 
> (yet).
> 
> I think FreeBSD might need a patch to sys/dev/ahci/ahci_pci.c, and maybe 
> some other files too.
> 
> Can somebody help me with disk access?


Try adjusting CMOS setup settings:

1.  System Configuration -> SATA Operation -- Dell typically sets to 
'RAID On'.  Try 'AHCI'.

2.  Boot -> Secure Boot and related -- Dell typically enables.  Try 
disabling:

	https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000133480/uefi-and-secure-boot-faqs


David