Dell PE R715 and Chelsio TX5 -> "timeout stopping cpus"

[Bjarke Emborg Kragelund]

FreeNAS 9.2.1.5
Dell PE R715 - AMD Dual Opteron 6300-series
256 GB Memory
LSI 9207

We have tried both the Broadcom and Intel NIC.

Due to the inability to HW-offload, we opted for the Chelsio NICs - T520-SO.

Unfortunately the FreeNAS now stops after mounting the ZFS.

( The Broadcoms and Intel worked fine without the offload )

I have tried disabling everything i could think of on the Chelsio NIC, but it still stops.

Chelsio is level 1.0.0.68.

Any thoughts?

Best regards
Bjarke Emborg Kragelund

 

[dlavigne]

Unfortunately the FreeNAS now stops after mounting the ZFS.

What does this mean? The system is freezing? It doesn't finish booting?

 

[Bjarke Emborg Kragelund]

It does not finish booting. Starts the debugger.

NMI ... going to debugger
NMI ISA 30, EISA ff
NMI ISA 20, EISA ff
...
timeout stopping cpus
db>

Tried swapping PCIe slots. Same problem.

If you copy the URL from the above links it works - but not embedded.

Brgds
Bjarke

 

[Bjarke Emborg Kragelund]

Do not think it is a FreeNAS / FreeBSD issue - on a warm boot I get a Dell NMI error as well. Post BIOS - Pre OS.

Nothing to see here - except that the Dell PE R715 and Chelsio does not play nice.

 

[ixdwhite]

If 1.0.0.68 is the card firmware version, that's pretty old firmware. The driver should update it automatically on most platforms, though if it can't link up or boot properly with the card present you'd need a second machine to do the update on.

However it sounds like there is a PCI Express issue with the card and the system in general that is not specific to FreeNAS. (NMIs can be generated for a few things, but traditionally they would get triggered for RAM ECC issues, but could also be hit for PCI Express (#SERR/#PERR issues on Dell. DRAC might have more details if the machine is equipped with one.)

I would check for a BIOS update and if that doesn't address the issue then open a support case with Dell and/or Chelsio to figure out the fundamental compatibility issue.

 

[cyberjock]

Who woke up ixdwhite from his slumber!