Marvell 88SE9215 chipset support

[sharp229]

Hello,

I have a SATA controller card (Syba SI-PEX40064) with a Marvell 88SE9215 chipset that is not recognized by either FreeNAS 8 or the latest nightly build (9.1.x). Is there any way to add a driver for this chipset, or is there any planned support?

I know the IBM 1015 is the recommended solution, but I was hoping to get something cheaper since I don't need the performance with 7200 RPM drives. I have access to free IBM 5014 controllers but apparently these do not allow drive passthrough and I would like to use ZFS rather than hardware RAID. If necessary I can buy a M1015, but just wanted to see if there was a workaround first.

Thanks!
-Ben

 

[tastyhouse]

Hello,

I have a SATA controller card (Syba SI-PEX40064) with a Marvell 88SE9215 chipset that is not recognized by either FreeNAS 8 or the latest nightly build (9.1.x). Is there any way to add a driver for this chipset, or is there any planned support?

I know the IBM 1015 is the recommended solution, but I was hoping to get something cheaper since I don't need the performance with 7200 RPM drives. I have access to free IBM 5014 controllers but apparently these do not allow drive passthrough and I would like to use ZFS rather than hardware RAID. If necessary I can buy a M1015, but just wanted to see if there was a workaround first.

Thanks!
-Ben

I'm having the exact same issue - it looks like there is currently no BSD driver support for this chipset which is unfortunate. Card works fine and is recognized in the bios without issue - hopefully some driver support gets integrated into freenas soon.

 

[micahlee]

Argh. Same here. Major bummer.

 

[tastyhouse]

any update on this? Does this need to be submitted to feature requests?

 

[cyberjock]

There is no driver for FreeBSD. If you want support you should check and see if there is a ticket for the hardware at the FreeBSD websites. Considering prior history with Marvell, I'd expect that there is a ticket somewhere that was closed to an answer like "broken.. can't fix". Marvell isn't exactly well known for providing any information on their hardware to allow drivers to be written.

So I wouldn't expect that this controller will ever be supported, but you never know. They might change their stance someday.

 

[mav@]

Support for Marvell 88SE9215 should be a just single line change to the AHCI driver. I've just committed respective change to FreeBSD HEAD and expect it to be present in FreeBSD 9.2 release.

 

[tastyhouse]

Support for Marvell 88SE9215 should be a just single line change to the AHCI driver. I've just committed respective change to FreeBSD HEAD and expect it to be present in FreeBSD 9.2 release.

wow really? Thats great news! Thanks!

 

[SpikeBit]

Hi there!

Can anyone confirm whether or not this card is compatible with the release 9.2 ?

Thanks!

 

[paleoN]

Can anyone confirm whether or not this card is compatible with the release 9.2 ?

What release 9.2? The commit did make it in.

 

[SpikeBit]

What release 9.2? The commit did make it in.

Sorry... I meant the FreeNAS 9.1.1 release.

 

[paleoN]

Sorry... I meant the FreeNAS 9.1.1 release.

If you have the hardware the easiest thing is just try it and see. It doesn't appear to have made it into trueos yet.

 

[SpikeBit]

If you have the hardware the easiest thing is just try it and see. It doesn't appear to have made it into trueos yet.

No, I do not have the card. But I'm thinking on buying one, since they are very cheap.
But by checking the link you provided with the FreeBSD supported devices, it seems there's no support yet!
Ok, I will look for another card then.

Thanks for your help!

 

[golemB]

Support for Marvell 88SE9215 should be a just single line change to the AHCI driver. I've just committed respective change to FreeBSD HEAD and expect it to be present in FreeBSD 9.2 release.

Hi mav@,

Thanks for doing this!

Is it possible to update an existing 9.1.1 installation of FreeNAS to contain your update? (I'm assuming it's this one.) If so, how?

Sorry for the n00b question. I'm assuming it would require something like downloading the FreeBSD sources, adding the line to ahci.c, and somehow recompiling the whole thing and then copying 1 or more files over to the USB key?

Or is there a simple binary file that could be downloaded and copied somewhere?

Thanks,
golemB

 

[mav@]

It requires kernel rebuild. FreeNAS 9.2.0 should be out soon, it will have all that is in FreeBSD 9.2.

 

[NASicist]

It requires kernel rebuild. FreeNAS 9.2.0 should be out soon, it will have all that is in FreeBSD 9.2.

I was happy to hear this as I just bought this dang card on sale but I guess I will be returning it as reality of 9.2 support hasn't panned out. The card fails detection in both FreeNAS and UNRaid. The idea that so little effort is needed to supposedly provide support in FreeNAS for this card as mentioned above makes me feel that this couldn't be true or that development of FreeBSD is severely wanting. I suppose it's not that big of a deal since one can get this card "4 Port SATA Serial ATA PCI RAID Controller Card - Silicon Image" from Monoprice that reportedly works for under $20 dollars + shipping though for low end non critical home systems.

Not sure now if the lack of support is the greater fault of Marvell or the server developers but the fact that UNRaid also doesn't provide support makes me feel that Marvell is the problem and I don't want to support a company that doesn't provide developer support. Otoh, it's printed right on the box that this card supports Linux 2.6x and above so it doesn't look like they've made an effort to shut out alternative OS's but without better confirmation that support is coming, I guess I'll just return it and get the Monoprice card...(pita).

 

[cyberjock]

Well, FreeBSD support usually has to start with the manufacturer of the hardware. Unless you are a very big company(Intel for example) support ranges from excellent to non-existent. Most smaller companies by dollar value do not consider FreeBSD to be an OS worth their time. So they don't support it. Marvell and SI are both companies that don't provide support at all for like 95% of their products. Some stuff works with hacked drivers. But by far most of it doesn't work at all.

We try to tell people to save themselves the hassle, performance problems, and reliability by reading and following our stickies for what hardware to use. If you choose to do your own thing you assume any problems that arise from those choices. Some people listen and just blindly buy the right stuff because they've learned to trust the pros regarding project hardware in the past. Some still insist on trying to get away with other hardware and hope it works out for them.

 

[Franklin7777]

Has anyone tested this with FreeNAS 9.2 yet? I would like to use the same card as the OP in a system I have.

 

[ddan24]

I joined literally to make this single post.

I am currently running FreeNAS-9.1.1-RELEASE-x64 (a752d35) and my SI-PEX40064 is recognized perfectly fine. I have 3 x 3 TB WD Red drives in a RaidZ1 I built to use as a secondary backup and eventually a snapshot archive. Been running perfect for about a week now. I didn't have to do anything special to get the card or drives to work. The card also allows for hotswapping of hard drives which my 8 onboard motherboard SATA ports do not, very handy. This works in FreeNAS perfectly as well, take about a minute for a drive to show up. I haven't shut down the server or rebooted it since I installed the card and setup the raid. I'm actually going to pick up a second once the price drops back down. I got it for $13.99 after rebate from NewEgg.

 

[unitstif]

Wondering if there is anymore information on this? Running Freenas 9.2.1.8 with this controller and cannot see any of the drives attached to it.

pciconf -lv
ahci0@pci0:1:0:0: class=0x010601 card=0x92151b4b chip=0x92151b4b rev=0x11 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'Marvell Technology Group Ltd.'
class = mass storage
subclass = SATA

dmesg | grep -i marvell
ahci0: <Marvell 88SE9215 AHCI SATA controller> port 0xdc00-0xdc07,0xd800-0xd803,0xd400-0xd407,0xd000-0xd003,0xcc00-0xcc1f mem 0xfdbff000-0xfdbff7ff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci1
e1000phy0: <Marvell 88E1116 Gigabit PHY> PHY 1 on miibus0


ahci0@pci0:1:0:0: class=0x010601 card=0x92151b4b chip=0x92151b4b rev=0x11 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'Marvell Technology Group Ltd.'
class = mass storage
subclass = SATA
bar [10] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0xdc00, size 8, enabled
bar [14] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0xd800, size 4, enabled
bar [18] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0xd400, size 8, enabled
bar [1c] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0xd000, size 4, enabled
bar [20] = type I/O Port, range 32, base 0xcc00, size 32, enabled
bar [24] = type Memory, range 32, base 0xfdbff000, size 2048, enabled
cap 01[40] = powerspec 3 supports D0 D3 current D0
cap 05[50] = MSI supports 1 message enabled with 1 message
cap 10[70] = PCI-Express 2 legacy endpoint max data 128(512) link x1(x1)
speed 2.5(5.0) ASPM disabled(L0s/L1)
cap 12[e0] = SATA Index-Data Pair
ecap 0001[100] = AER 1 0 fatal 0 non-fatal 1 corrected

 

[unitstif]

found the answer to my issue... ahcich power saving issues
http://zfsguru.com/forum/zfsgurusupport/508