Adding driver support for Adaptec RAID 6805

[Todd]

I'm loving FreeNAS and this forum. Awesome job to everyone involved.

I am pulling the trigger and rolling my own FreeNAS box. After reading tons of hardware configurations and recommendations I've settled on some hardware that looks like this:

NORCO CHASSIS - RPC-4020
CORSAIR HX850W 850w POWER SUPPLY
SUPERMICRO MOTHERBOARD C2SEA
INTEL CELERON E3400 2.6G CPU
4GB RAM
ADAPTEC 6805 SATA III RAID CONTROLLER KIT
10 x 2TB 7200 RPM, SATA 6G, 64MB CACHE SEAGATE BARRACUDA XT HARD DRIVE
(I will add a SAS expander and another 12 drives in the near future)

Hardware has been purchased, delivered and assembled. FreeNAS USB stick created. Unfortunately, FreeNAS won't pickup my Adaptec RAID 6805 controller.

Given that FreeNAS is built on FreeBSD and I can download drivers from Adaptec for that platform, can anyone give me some guidance on how to successfully apply/install this driver?

Apprecaite the help.

 

[Todd]

RAID driver installed. Hard drives not recognized.

I know the driver is loaded because when I launch FreeNAS with verbose logging, I can see the Adaptec device loading in /var/log/messages

For others new to FreeNAS (like myself) here is how I loaded the driver:

Note: I'm running FreeNAS from an embedded USB stick

First downloaded the FreeBSD .tgz from Adaptec. Had to untar it to get to the FreeBSD8 driver tarball I needed. Once I got that .tgz I copied it to a second USB stick.

- Booted FreeNAS from USB1
- Selected option 7 from the main menu to goto the FreeNAS shell
- Insert USB2 (with my driver tarball)
- mount USB1 for read/write: mount -uw /
- mount USB2: mount -t msdos /dev/ad01 /mnt
- cd /
- mkdir /tmp
- cp /mnt/aac8x-i386.tgz /tmp
- pkg_add /tmp/aac8x-i386.tgz
- reboot

When rebooting, take option 5 to launch FreeNAS with verbose logging to see if the driver is being loaded.

For whatever reason, the two SATA drives connected to the motherboard are seen by FreeNAS but none of the drives connected to the controller can be seen. When we configure Storage options from within the FreeNAS GUI, we can only see ada0 and ada1.

Kinda screams that our driver install didn't work but we don't get any errors on boot.

I read a couple posts that Adaptec RAID controllers and FreeBSD are like a bad marriages. Might elect to return this controller and go for an LSI based one.

I've also read about stripping the MBR from each of the drives. We've never used these drives but it's the next thing we're going to try.

 

[aflinta]

Have You tried to export disk from RAID controller by creating JBOD or any RAID volume? Without this step none of drives connected to RAID controller will be visible by OS.

 

[Todd]

I'm getting the distinct impression this Adaptec controller is just too new for this project. We tried various troubleshooting steps including:
- initializing the disks and identifying them as JBOD within the RAID setup
- tried creating RAID 5 and 6 storage arrays. No luck.
- also tried the opposite, based on some other posts, and did not define any RAID arrays or JBOD disks... just initialized the disks. No luck.
- tried rolling back to FreeNAS 7. Same behaviour.
- secure erased the disks using the RAID utilities, hoping to clear any MBR that could possibly be on the disks. No luck.

Really iritating because I know the RAID controller is getting picked up and active.

As an alternative test, we took the liberty to simply swap the controller without changing anything else. We swapped in an older IBM ServeRAID BR10i LSI SAS3082E-R 8-port PCI-Express SAS RAID controller. Ain't it a kick in the rump that everything worked without issue.

I would use this controller but fear the x1 througput speeds will quickly get saturated with the number of drives I plan to use.

 

[tbingel]

Hi Todd,
I have almost the same configuration with you except the mobo and CPU.
I have installed the 0.7.2.6694 x64 version with no problem at all.
Freenas automatically recognized the 6805 card with no intervention from me.
However, If you do not go into the controller card's setup screen at pre-boot stage and set the RAID array, in some cases Freenas has difficulty recognizing the interface.
Another possible cause would be the PCI-e slot that you are using. 6805 requires a 16x slot eventhough the card does not extend all the way into the slot.
See if you get to see the Adaptec's pre-boot sequence as to "Bios was not installed!" or such. If you do, then your card and mobo are talking to each other.
If your mobo recognizes the card and freenas doesn't then you might want to update your BIOS first. This helps sometimes.
Then try and build your RAID.
Let me know if any of these are of any help.

 

[Elshar]

I actually have a 2405 which works great in 0.7.2, but after installing 8, it shows the card and the drives (as pass0 through pass3), but as ununitialized scsi drives (This is my ZFS array).

 

[Todd]

tbingel, appreciate the input. We updated both motherboard bios and RAID controller firmware. If we define a RAID 5/6 array and install FreeNAS 0.7.2.6694 x64, the RAID volume gets picked up by FreeNAS. Boot up FreeNAS 8 x64 and the array isn't seen. If we initialize the disks with JBOD the drives cannot be seen in FreeNAS 7 or 8. If we disable any RAID array or JBOD setup, drives cannot be seen in FreeNAS 7 or 8. Say what!

I'm not against RAID6 but was working toward having a ZFS installation.

Maybe my motherboard is causing the issue. Do you mind sharing the motherboard you have?

Thanks for your help.

I'm going to keep working on it and will post back any progress.

 

[Todd]

Elshar, thanks for your input too. There is a chance I'll be taking this Adaptec 6805 back and getting the 2405.

 

[survive]

Hi Todd,

If you want to doZFS why don't you just get an HBA instead of a RAID card? Why pay for functionality you don't want to use...more money for drives!

Take a look at this list here for a good run-down of cards:

http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=10

-Will

 

[Gernash]

I have a 6805e in freenas 7 only port 0 will show drives. If you populate both ports no drives will show up with the default driver.

I have upgraded to Freenas 8 64x and have installed it in the following.

mount -uw /
copy the aacu64.ko and aacu.ko into /boot/modules folder

from the web gui open the system --> loaders section and choose add loader

under variable put aacu64_load or aacu_load for 32bit install (either will work on 64x Freenas8)

in value put YES

that's it.

Oh 1 more thing if the drives are not unformatted make sure you erase them 1st (i.e. no partitions)

I have 8x2Tb Drives as a JBOD and they appear individually in the GUI. Just create your array and add your share points/datasets.

Note: if you installed it the way described in the Adaptec installation guide make sure you delete the driver from /boot/kernel and /boot/module also edit the /boot/boot.conf as in ther it adds the #aacu_load="YES" at the end of the file without a carriage return causing it to fail.
The Adaptec way installs both drivers but only loads the 32x version.

Hope this helps you.
(the next issue you will have is shutting down, restarting or upgrading the software as described in my other post.)

http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?5526-Adaptec-6805-driver-issue-Shutdown