The Readme file for FreeNAS 8.3 beta 2 states:
- The mps driver for 6gbps LSI SAS HBAs is version 13, which requires
phase 13 firmware on the controller. This is a hard requirement,
running older firmware can cause many woes, including the failure to
probe all of the attached disks, which can lead to degraded or
unavailable arrays.
However the firmware available on the LSI support website is version 14 and there is no version 13 available for download.
It looks like both FreeBSD 8.2 and 8.3 are going with older firmware (13?) while latest FreeBSD has a driver that looks like the one from LSI website for firmware version 14.
Does the recommendation in the readme file mean one should upgrade to version 14 and hope for the best?
Alternatively I could try building my own FreeNAS image file and install source code manually for driver version 14 and flash the firmware to version 14. That would be most complicated approach.
Urs
P.S. I am seeing that LSI has kernel module for mpslsi.ko in their FreeBSD download zip archive. FreeNAS does not have mpslsi.ko in /boot/kernel. I am not sure if that means one could upgrade the drivers more easily if they would not be compiled into kernel but made available as loadable modules.
- The mps driver for 6gbps LSI SAS HBAs is version 13, which requires
phase 13 firmware on the controller. This is a hard requirement,
running older firmware can cause many woes, including the failure to
probe all of the attached disks, which can lead to degraded or
unavailable arrays.
However the firmware available on the LSI support website is version 14 and there is no version 13 available for download.
It looks like both FreeBSD 8.2 and 8.3 are going with older firmware (13?) while latest FreeBSD has a driver that looks like the one from LSI website for firmware version 14.
Does the recommendation in the readme file mean one should upgrade to version 14 and hope for the best?
Alternatively I could try building my own FreeNAS image file and install source code manually for driver version 14 and flash the firmware to version 14. That would be most complicated approach.
Urs
P.S. I am seeing that LSI has kernel module for mpslsi.ko in their FreeBSD download zip archive. FreeNAS does not have mpslsi.ko in /boot/kernel. I am not sure if that means one could upgrade the drivers more easily if they would not be compiled into kernel but made available as loadable modules.