Areca 1320 & FreeNAS 9.2

[HokieCoder]

This evening I thought "why not upgrade my FreeNAS installation from 8.3.1 to the newest that is available". I read through the instructions and warnings and went ahead with the upgrade via GUI with the image for v9.2 x64. Everything went well and soon I was presented with the GUI for v9.2. All my settings were still there, but the alert icon was flashing yellow. My ZFS volume was in an unknown state. Uh oh! Turns out that FreeNAS 9.2 doesn't see any of my 8 HDDs attached to my Areca 1320-8i non-RAID HBA. Previously in v8.3.1 I had added the kernel module for the HBA and added the "ARCSAS_LOAD" tunable to my settings so that the module would be loaded at boot. So my first thought was that since it was a new install, I might have to redo that. But v9.2 comes with the module already in the /boot/modules directory. I checked dmesg and found this near the beginning of the listing:

Code:

KLD file arcsas.ko - could not finalize loading

While I was in an SSH session I tried loading the driver manually:

Code:

~# kldload -n -v /boot/modules/arcsas.ko
kldload: can't load /boot/modules/arcsas.ko: Exec format error

Looking at dmesg after trying to load the driver manually I saw this:

Code:

KLD arcsas.ko: depends on kernel - not available or version mismatch
linker_load_file: Unsupported file type

I have also tried grabbing the driver for FreeBSD v9.2 via Areca's website http://www.areca.com.tw/support/s_freebsd/nonraid_freebsd.htm, but that won't load either. The driver specifically for FreeNAS v9.1 also doesn't work. I am at a complete loss here because there seems to be no driver that will work for my Areca HBA and I can't go back to my previous 8.3.1 install because of the database upgrade (I tried already, but the GUI won't even load because of the database having an updated schema). I would appreciate any help anyone may be able to offer!

 

[dlavigne]

Please create an issue at bugs.freenas.org and post the issue number here.

 

[HokieCoder]

Bug #3890 created.

 

[HokieCoder]

So the bug has been assigned to someone and that person is contacting Areca to see if they can get a fixed driver to be merged into a future release. Does anyone have any suggestions for what I can do in the interim? I feel like I am dead in the water because I cannot access any of my data, which I need. I am still running v9.2.0, but obviously the driver doesn't work so it can't see the drives. Trying to boot the old 8.3.1 install throws tons of errors about the database tables and the GUI won't even load properly, which I mentioned previously. I don't know about the backwards compatibility of 9.X databases, so I don't know if it'd be possible to try a previous 9.X release to see if the driver would work? Any other options?

 

[cyberjock]

Does your controller need a firmware upgrade? It could be your firmware isn't compatible with the driver.

 

[HokieCoder]

I don't believe so. Areca's website isn't very informative, but my controller is running v1.05, dated 2012/02/23, just like the date found in the BIOS listing on Areca's website (see link in my OP). There is a seemingly newer firmware for EFI BIOS, which I don't know if I am able to use or not. I am not running an EFI BIOS on my motherboard, and I would assume I'd need that in order to be able to use an EFI firmware on my Areca controller. Am I wrong with that? Can the two be independent of each other? Also, the download file for the non-EFI BIOS doesn't contain any helpful information about which version it is. Only the date listed on the page is informative.