Installation stops after a few seconds on a Microserver Gen10

[fgrehl]

Hi,
you can fix this permanently by adding set kFreeBSD.hw.pci.realloc_bars=1 in GRUB when booting the installer, or by adding a tunable in FreeNAS:
Variable: hw.pci.realloc_bars
Value: 1
Type: Loader

See:
http://www.virten.net/2017/10/fix-for-freenas-on-hpe-microserver-gen10-x3216-stuck-console-issue/

 

[isiton]

Now that there's a fix for the boot issue, are there any other problems running FreeNAS on the Gen10? Especially concerning the Marvell Controller? I'm thinking about replacing my old NAS with a Gen10 (don't mind the soldered CPU/no ILO criticism).

 

[fgrehl]

Replaced my N40L based FreeNAS box (Fileserver and ESXi iSCSI Datastore). No Problems so far and way better performance.

 

[isiton]

Thanks, sounds good. How‘s the noise level? The Gen8s were said to be a bit noisy.

 

[MaxL]

Hmm, so problem is with non supported Opteron APUs Video drivers!
So solution (one of them sure) is to put some older Video card Low profile in available PCIe x1 slot and disable all of Integrated Video inside HP server and yes it WORKS, like charm without any further problems even with further updates until FreeBSD get proper support for this video graphics.
This solution also works on NAS4FREE.
Regarding Marvel Controller just let drives unconfigured and they will be directly available. You will be getting Virtual drive or something with size of 0 bytes but ignore it, and yes BSD support for Marvell 88SE9230 is relatively OK but still no HBA mode.

This was checked and working on NAS4FREE latest, HP Microserver Gen10, 2c Opteron x3216, HP LP PCIe x16 AMD 4450 512M LP Card (on x1 slot), 8GB DDR4 ECC, USB 3.0 32GB Flash drive for embedded (mounted on inside USB port), 4x WD Black 4TB latest, 525 GB SSD Crucial MX300 on SATA5 connector (instead of CD ROM), 10G-BaseT Intel X540-T2 (LP on PCIe x8 slot) with Netgear XS708E for iSCSI NAS with ESXi.
Also working like charm iSCSI to ESXi with Intel X520-DA1 card LP on x8 slot, Direct Attach Cable (SFP+ 5m direct attach cable) and Mikrotik CRS317-1G-16S+RM (btw cheapest 16p 10G switch available).
Sorry if mentioning NAS4FREE is somehow forbidden or such, but hey it's all frebsd ;)

 

[isiton]

Thanks, MaxL. Sorry for the dumb question, but what’s the downside of no hba mode?
No video is a bit of a downer, however, since I don‘t have a spare video card. Does neither VGA or DisplayPort work?

EDIT:
I looked up some video cards, would a MSI GeForce GT 710 1GD3H LP also work on the x1 slot?
Reading a bit about HBA I'm still not quite sure what it means. Does SMART work with the Marvell Controller?

Thanks a lot for the help!

 

[MaxL]

GT 710 should work, basically any "older" PCIe x16 LP Video card should work, it can be put in HPs x1 slot as this slot is slit on end and no need for pure x1 PCIe card (x16 card overhang PCB of motherboard but MB is rather clear and no fear or some short circuits or such, and any x16 Video card can work with x1 slot only with some rather slower bandwith transfer rates, but as we use it as plain VGA card in TEXT mode no problem with that slowness ).

HBA is short for Host Based Adapter and basically means HBA SAS/SATA adapter doesn't have none fancy RAID features nor cache and drives are directly attached without any overhead and put to controll of NAS so that NAS via software means and with help of proper CPU and ECC RAM do storage management of excellence without real constraints.

Now regarding Marvel 9230 seems to work well on HP microserver gen10. I used discrete Marvel 9230 (or was that 9235, anyway some card version without any RAID just plain AHCI support) as PCIe v2 x2 card on few Dell PE T20 small servers with onboard 2port SATA 3 to get 6 HDD NAS storage as well and they are working rather well over 2 years now,

SMART works on Marvell.

Check on ebay for LP cards like they are rather cheap:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Radeon-...020182?hash=item569ab94396:g:fc8AAOSwIaFZKGmZ
https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-353049-...526413?hash=item3f8acb6a0d:g:CpEAAOSwOKZZlHP7
https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-HD-6450...762973?hash=item56a190199d:g:NnAAAOSw1IlZvTUm

and many more even real PCIe x1 Video cards.

 

[isiton]

Thanks a lot, MaxL! Ordered a Gen10 today and will look for a video card now.

Edit: received my Gen10 yesterday. Installed FreeNAS with the GRUB fix and everything seemed to work, didn't need an extra video card either, VGA worked out of the box (11.0 U4). Thanks for all the help!

 

[emjay00]

I've been trying to run FreeNAS on my Gen10 and have had a lot of performance issues. Thanks for the fix posted above that got me past the boot issues, but for whatever reason, SMB and NFS downloads from any datastore, cap out around 30Mb/s. I've tried a ton of different fixes... different drives (SSD/Sata), added memory, different NICs, and I just cant figure it out.

No matter what test host I'm coming from (Win10, Macbook Pro, Ubuntu), they all show the same speed issues. Uploading to the NAS seems acceptable, close to 1Gb line speed (100+ MB/s). Running out of options to test.

Any thoughts? Wondering if disabling ACPI has anything to do with the performance issues.

(Note: I've also tried tearing the whole thing down and creating an OmniOS/napp-it instance, and have the same exact symptoms -- makes it seem more and more like a hardware/BIOS/system issue)

 

[Fidric]

Hi everybody,

someone installed FreeNAS on Gen 10 and setup a ZFS1 4x6TB?
I would like to know also if anybody succeeded to run the OS disk with this adapter (or something similar) instead of the CD-ROM:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/9-5mm-Universal-Drive-DVD-ROM-Optical/dp/B01MA20LMD/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1521141366&sr=8-4-fkmr1&keywords=Salcar+-+2nd+HDD/SSD+SATA+III

Thank you

 

[Fidric]

, 525 GB SSD Crucial MX300 on SATA5 connector (instead of CD ROM), ;)

How did you connect the Crucial SSD? Did you use something like this?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/9-5mm-Univ...-fkmr1&keywords=Salcar+-+2nd+HDD/SSD+SATA+III

 

[Jernej Suhadolc]

Hi all,

sorry to spoil this discussion, but looks like disk controler is a huge problem here.

This is what I'm getting in the log after upgrade to FreeBSD 11.1-STABLE (FreeNAS.amd64) #2 r321665+366f54a78b2(freenas/11.1-stable):

Apr 17 10:03:29 freenas notifier: swapoff: removing /dev/mirror/swap0.eli as swap device
Apr 17 10:03:29 freenas notifier: swapoff: removing /dev/mirror/swap1.eli as swap device
Apr 17 10:03:29 freenas notifier: 32+0 records in
Apr 17 10:03:29 freenas notifier: 32+0 records out
Apr 17 10:03:29 freenas notifier: 33554432 bytes transferred in 0.373080 secs (89938876 bytes/sec)
Apr 17 10:03:30 freenas notifier: dd: /dev/ada4: short write on character device
Apr 17 10:03:30 freenas notifier: dd: /dev/ada4: end of device
Apr 17 10:03:30 freenas notifier: 33+0 records in
Apr 17 10:03:30 freenas notifier: 32+1 records out
Apr 17 10:03:30 freenas notifier: 34430976 bytes transferred in 0.350744 secs (98165501 bytes/sec)
Apr 17 10:03:32 freenas ZFS: vdev state changed, pool_guid=12730219906103475571 vdev_guid=8771933641699644057
Apr 17 10:03:32 freenas ZFS: vdev state changed, pool_guid=12730219906103475571 vdev_guid=8771933641699644057
Apr 17 10:03:43 freenas smartd[5836]: Unable to register device /dev/da0 (no Directive -d removable). Exiting.
Apr 17 10:05:20 freenas ZFS: vdev state changed, pool_guid=12730219906103475571 vdev_guid=10820416003786085474
Apr 17 10:05:20 freenas ZFS: vdev state changed, pool_guid=12730219906103475571 vdev_guid=2034175580267803549
Apr 17 10:05:20 freenas ZFS: vdev state changed, pool_guid=12730219906103475571 vdev_guid=6203762202224850426
Apr 17 10:05:20 freenas ZFS: vdev state changed, pool_guid=12730219906103475571 vdev_guid=8483278398689908095
Apr 17 10:05:20 freenas ZFS: vdev state changed, pool_guid=12730219906103475571 vdev_guid=513696732644176248
Apr 17 10:11:56 freenas ahcich2: Timeout on slot 9 port 0
Apr 17 10:11:56 freenas ahcich2: is 00000000 cs 00000200 ss 00000200 rs 00000200 tfd 50 serr 00000000 cmd 10008917
Apr 17 10:11:56 freenas (ada2:ahcich2:0:0:0): READ_FPDMA_QUEUED. ACB: 60 18 f0 d2 50 40 8f 00 00 00 00 00
Apr 17 10:11:56 freenas (ada2:ahcich2:0:0:0): CAM status: Command timeout
Apr 17 10:11:56 freenas (ada2:ahcich2:0:0:0): Retrying command
Apr 17 10:15:55 freenas ahcich2: Timeout on slot 23 port 0
Apr 17 10:15:55 freenas ahcich2: is 00000000 cs 1f800000 ss 1f800000 rs 1f800000 tfd 50 serr 00000000 cmd 10009c17
Apr 17 10:15:55 freenas (ada2:ahcich2:0:0:0): READ_FPDMA_QUEUED. ACB: 60 48 28 cd 69 40 8f 00 00 00 00 00
Apr 17 10:15:55 freenas (ada2:ahcich2:0:0:0): CAM status: Command timeout
Apr 17 10:15:55 freenas (ada2:ahcich2:0:0:0): Retrying command
Apr 17 10:16:26 freenas ahcich2: Timeout on slot 3 port 0

zpool of course blew up and is now rebuilding. It's not an issue with disk, I've changed it and happens anyway.

I'll try to upgrade the firmware, I hope it's possible with Windows on a stick, since FreeBSD is not supported..

Jernej

 

[Bobbi]

Just out of curiosity:

Did you get all issues fixed in the meanwhile guys? Or is it still recommended to use a SuperMicro custom build instead of a ProLiant MicroServer Gen10?

I am also thinking to use a MicroServer Gen10 for FreeNAS, but I am uncertain about this after reading your several discomforts with it...

 

[horizonbrave]

jeez, looks like they couldn't do a SFF server any worse.. no hotswap drive cages either.

@Jernej Suhadolc, did you fix it?

 

[tmikaeld]

I find the HP practises of not allowing us to download BIOS updates truly disgusting. Is there any alternative to the Gen10 that is not HP?

 

[AlexMata]

I am also looking for an alternative to the MicroServer Gen10 while waiting for its bugs to be fixed. For my use case it would be perfect.

 

[Brian L]

I am trying to install FreeNAS-11.3-U4.1 on to a HP MicroServer Gen 10 with bios version ZA10A380.
Install is still hanging at -- pci0: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib0
Are there any fixes for this situation?
thanks.