FreeNAS 9.1 with FC attached drives not showing up

[Hugo]

Hello all,

I have an test setup with (old) EMC disk arrays attached to an server over fibre channel. To be able to connect to the drives with FreeNAS 8.3, I had to copy the ispfw.ko and isp_2300.ko module into /boot/modules (to support the FC HBA). I've modified the loader.conf file to include: ispfw_load="YES". After an reboot, "camcontrol devlist" shows all attached disks.

However, using FreeNAS 9.1 I cannot get this to work anymore. I'm using the isp modules from FreeBSD 9.1 (extracted from FreeBSD-9.1-RELEASE-amd64-bootonly.iso). I also ran kldxref /boot/modules /boot/kernel (not sure if this is necessary).

The module seems to load fine as it is displayed when running kldstat.
And the boot messages seems to be fine too:

Code:

[root@freenas] ~# dmesg | grep isp
ispfw: registered firmware <isp_1040>
ispfw: registered firmware <isp_1040_it>
ispfw: registered firmware <isp_1080>
ispfw: registered firmware <isp_1080_it>
ispfw: registered firmware <isp_12160>
ispfw: registered firmware <isp_12160_it>
ispfw: registered firmware <isp_2100>
ispfw: registered firmware <isp_2200>
ispfw: registered firmware <isp_2300>
ispfw: registered firmware <isp_2322>
ispfw: registered firmware <isp_2400>
ispfw: registered firmware <isp_2400_multi>
ispfw: registered firmware <isp_2500>
ispfw: registered firmware <isp_2500_multi>
isp0: <Qlogic ISP 2312 PCI FC-AL Adapter> port 0x3000-0x30ff mem 0xd8100000-0xd8100fff irq 24 at device 1.0 on pci5
isp1: <Qlogic ISP 2312 PCI FC-AL Adapter> port 0x3400-0x34ff mem 0xd8101000-0xd8101fff irq 25 at device 1.1 on pci5
vgapci0: <VGA-compatible display> port 0x4000-0x40ff mem 0xd0000000-0xd7ffffff,0xd8300000-0xd830ffff irq 18 at device 1.0 on pci7

I also modified device.hints to include: hint.isp.0.role="initiator"
But that did not make any difference (I think initiator mode is default?).

The arrays are connected without an FC switch.

Just to be sure I installed 8.3 on another USB memory stick and after installing the modules, the disks on the array show up again.

Does anyone has any clue why this won't work with FreeNAS 9.1 anymore? Is the FreeNAS kernel lacking some support for this?

I'm more of a Linux guy than an BSD guy, so I might miss some basic FreeNAS/BSD stuff here. Sorry for that. Still learning...

Hugo

 

[dlavigne]

Does anything in this post help?

 

[Hugo]

Hi,

Sorry for the late respons, but thanks for your reply. I've came accross that post earlier. I also updated the kernel mentioned in that post, but makes no difference. The ctl module however seems to add target support in FreeNAS which is not what I'm looking for.

 

[phil.re]

Hi,

were you able to solve the problem?
I recently did an update from FreeNAS 8.3.1 to 9.1.1 and now the devices connected by FC (directly without hub) are not available any more.
Booting back into 8.3.1 currently also fails, so it would be nice if I could get it working in 9.1.1

Thanks in advance,
Philipp

 

[Hugo]

Hi Philipp,

No unfortunately I was not able to get it working in 9.1. What type of FC cards do you use? Do you see the cards properly initiate at system boot?
Until I have some more ideas or a follow up on how to solve this, I've reverted to the 8.3 branch.

 

[phil.re]

I'm using a Qlogic QLE2460.
I think got as far as you, the device itself was detected but none of the discs. For now I too just reverted to 8.3, where the devices are working just perfectly.

 

[wRaul goycoolea]

Hi, I'm exactly with the same problem. Qlogic 2432 worked perfectly win FreeNAS 8.3. After upgrade to FreeNAS 9.1 now I'm not able to see the disk.

It appear that the ispfw.ko is loaded. But just after the Qlogic card is detected during the boot process the fiber link goes down.

I have tried everything from kernel modules, but nothing. Now I'm not able to return to FreeNAS 8.3 because I update the ZFS version on the internal disk!!! Yes, I will like to kill me.

I had posted a thread on the forums http://forums.freenas.org/threads/qlogic-isp-2432-hba-on-freenas-9-1-1.15833/ but not received any help yet.

Please, if some know how to make the Qlogic HBAs cards to work on FreeNAS 9.1 will be very appreciated!!!

 

[Hugo]

I'm hoping that someone with a bit more developer related knowledge of FreeNAS should be able to give some hints on how to resolve this, or what the issue might be. I'm quite an experienced Linux user, but still learning on FreeBSD / FreeNAS and I'm quite stuck with this. As more users experience the same issue, it seems unrelated to the specific used hardware. I know that this might not be an supported configuration (using external FC disk arrays), but it would be nice if I/we can still use this.
8.3 works fine, but it would be nice to keep up with the current version.
Thanks for any hints

 

[paleoN]

I'm hoping that someone with a bit more developer related knowledge of FreeNAS should be able to give some hints on how to resolve this, or what the issue might be.

Have you checked on bug.freenas.org? In particular, Bug #3196.

 

[wRaul goycoolea]

Didn't see that bug in my searches for a possible solution. I will check the suggestion today and post the results. Thanks for the advice paleoN!!

 

[Hugo]

I've missed that one too. I tried setting hint.isp.0.role="initiator" earlier, but the mentioned setting is slightly different. Since the reporter in redmine has resolved his issue, It will likely helps us too. Thanks for pointing to this report!
I will try this asap.

 

[wRaul goycoolea]

Confirming that the workaround posted on Bug #3196 worked perfectly. Just adding the two hint lines, reboot FreeNAS and Voila!!! The disks on the array appear on the Disk list and able to map and use them perfectly. Thanks

 

[Hugo]

Yes, I also confirm this. Works perfectly. I suspected earlier that the hba was in target mode, and tried to set it to initiator mode (as explained in my starting post), but either the device.hints file is not read or my configuration line was wrong and has to be set to "2" instead of "initiator".
Anyway, adding the values as tunable works perfectly well.
Thanks for the help paleoN!