Newbie needs help with Raid Card

[Grantp]

Hi everyone,

I am totally new to FreeNAS / ZFS / FreeBSD etc and I've got myself completely stuck.

I am trying to use my existing LSI MegaRAID 9240-8i with FreeNAS-8.3.1-RC1-x64. I have 8 x 3TB SATA III Hard Drives. I have set the HD's as JBOD on the 9240 as I want ZFS to handle the Raid for me. When I try to boot I am getting the following msg -

mfi0: COMMAND 0xffffff8000b216c8 TIMEOUT AFTER 59 SECONDS, then repeating every 30 seconds.

I realise this is on the Forum in other places but I haven't been able to work out what I can do to sort this (if anything). Many posts take about running a PATCH but I don't know how to run a patch as I can't get to a command prompt and they all seem to be quiet lengthy lines of commands/code how do I run them.

I also realise that I may be better off running a HBA but as I already have a raid card and set drives to JBOD I assumed that would work.

Any help / pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks Grant

 

[cyberjock]

Soo.. have you even tried the RELEASE version? I mean, betas/release candidates are for advanced users only. This is the 3rd time this week I've made this comment and the other 2 times their problems went away...

 

[Grantp]

Hi cyberjock, Thanks for reply. Yes I have tried 'FreeNAS-8.3.0-RELEASE-p1-x64' and got the same result thats why I tried the RC. I found this that says problem has been fixed in 8.3 but obviously hasn't http://support.freenas.org/ticket/131. Can you suggest anything else I might try?

Many Thanks Grant

 

[cyberjock]

I have no advice that will fix this in the here-and-now. Per that ticket the last post by a user said that you should save yourself the trouble and get a refund. If you were using the card because you had it lying around you could see if you get the same error by trying FreeBSD 8.3 and FreeBSD 9. If both of those boot up fine then I would open a ticket and see if the issue can be found and fixed. Personally, I'm not a fan of LSI so I've never owned one.

 

[Grantp]

Ok thanks for your help. Am I better of getting a HBA 8 Port that way I will be able to connect my 8 HD's as I only have 4xSATA III & 2xSATA II available on my motherboard. Are you or anyone else able to advise me on a good compatable card.

Many thanks again

Grant

 

[paleoN]

I refer you to this post on freebsd-stable mailing list, LSI 9240-4i 4K alignment.

 

[Grantp]

Thanks paleoN - I have flashed to IT and card now working.