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SATA controller causes the system to get stuck on "Loading operating system ..."

D

Diod631

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Feb 2, 2011
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Hi, I have a system running FreeBSD 8.3 with the following hardware:

Gigabyte GA-H67A-UD3H-B3
Intel Core i5 2400
4 x 4 GB DDR3-1333
be quiet! Dark Power Pro P9 550W
Intel SASUC8I (in a PCI-Express x16 slot, with LSI IT firmware)
Intel PRO/1000 GT ethernet adapter
11 x 2 TB drives (WD20EARS and WD20EARX)
1 x 3 TB drive (WD30EARX)
1 x 1 TB drive (WD10EADS): the boot disk

The 2 TB and 3 TB drives are in a zpool consisting of 2 RAIDZ-2 vdevs with 6 drives each (the 3 TB drive was given to me as a replacement for a dying 2 TB one).
The SATA ports on the motherboard and Intel SASUC8I are all taken and this configuration works without any issues.

However, once I add another PCI-Express SATA controller and attach a HDD to that controller (I want to mirror the boot disk), the computer gets stuck trying to boot up. The message displayed is "Loading operating system ...", which appears after all of the PCI(-Express) cards (the SATA controllers and ethernet adapter) have been initialized. I've tried it with a cheap Delock 70137 and a HighPoint Rocket 620 and both result in the same issue. I've tried placing them in PCI-Express x1 and x4 slots.

I'm not sure what the cause is, since all of the PCI(-Express) cards initialize correctly. All of the SATA controllers show the attached disks, even the Delock 70137 and the HighPoint Rocket 620.
 
It almost sounds like it's trying to boot from the new HDD (which is on the new PCI-E card, right?) Are you sure the boot order is right?
 
Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to the be problem. Manually selecting the boot disk results in the system hanging in the same spot.
 
I wonder if they are just interfering with each other then? I've heard of bios related things like that recently (not specifically related to your issue...) On the other hand, you can pick that drive in the BIOS, but it might be causing confusion vis-a-vis drive numbering (e.g. the boot code thinks the OS is somewhere it isn't...)
 
Well, to be fair, the only drives showing up in the BIOS of the motherboard are the ones connected to the motherboard itself and to the SASUC8I controller.
The disk connected to the other SATA controller does not show up in the list of HDDs.
That said, when the computer is booting and the PCI cards are being initialized, the BIOS of each SATA controller shows the disks attached to the controller, including the Delock 70137 and the HighPoint Rocket 620.

Could it be that the motherboard simply can't handle more than 13 attached disks? Or, as you said, it could be the controllers conflicting with each other.
 
Hmmm, is the current boot drive on a mobo SATA port? If not, swap it there, disable bios option roms for any other disk controllers, and see if that 'fixes' it? If so, put the second drive on another mobo sata port and set up the mirror. Obviously you'd need to move another drive off its mobo port.
 
Yes, the boot drive is connected to an onboard SATA port. I doubt I can disable the BIOS option roms for the controllers though, I can't find anything relating to this in the BIOS setup.
 
Ugh. I feel your pain. Here's a thought: Are these 3.5 inch drives? I scored an SE3016 jbod chassis on ebay for under $200 including shipping. Holds 16 drives total. Takes an SFF-8088 cable. You could move your existing 12 data drives to it, connect the sacuc8i to it (you'd probably need an 8087/8088 adapter and an 8088 cable.) Put the old and new boot drives on sata mobo ports.
 
Yeah, the drives I'm using are regular 3.5" drives. I might buy something like that chassis in a few years when/if I need to expand my zfs pool, mirroring the boot drive is not important enough to justify the purchase right now. I can get the important stuff up and running again in an hour if the boot drive fails. Besides, if I ever notice the boot disk is starting to fail, I can always unplug a disk from my data pool, plug in a replacement for the boot disk, mirror it and plug the data disk back in. It's just a shame that I wasted money on these SATA controllers, guess I'll just try selling them.

Thanks for your help :)
 
Given that very little useful changes on the root pool drive(s), I'd recommend taking the backup of it now (mirror more correctly), and then just stash it safely away.
 
Hmmm, not a bad idea. I could just boot up a live cd of ubuntu or whatever and use dd or something like that. Shouldn't take too long and it should provide me with something I can use in emergencies. Thanks :)
 
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This in an OI install, no? If so, you can do the mirroring online. Plug the second drive in, attach it as a mirror to the existing root drive, wait for it to resilver, detach it, unplug it and done. It is a minor hassle to set up the second root drive initially (it needs to use solaris slice 0), but googling for opensolaris mirror root pool shows a handful of easy steps.
 
Nah, FreeBSD. Thing is, it's kind of a pain to set up root zfs mirroring (it's partially setup already, but I'd need to configure the second disk too), I think it would be quicker to just copy it with dd.
 
FreeBSD should work just as well. Up to you, but it only takes a couple of minutes, and it's got the advantage you can do periodic backups of your root pool (I do this monthly). Hot plug the 2nd drive, attach to the root pool, wait for resilver, detach from root pool, hot-unplug. dd has the disadvantage that it will need to do (AFAIK) a sector by sector copy (e.g. potentially very slow...)
 
Yeah, I guess that might be faster than dd. At least then it wouldn't have to copy the entire disk, just the part of the disk that's in use. I might do this next time, it won't be a regular occurance though. I don't have any hot swap bays (it's a regular tower case) so I have to open up the case when I need to change a disk.
 
Heh, same here. I took a sata cable, plugged it into the mobo, removed one of the I/O slot plates, and led the sata cable and a molex power cable out the open slot for this :)
 
The things we go through to protect our data... :)

dd does take a really long time... Next time I'll definitely use zfs' resilvering instead.
 
All it takes is a screwup with no root pool backup and everything is down HARD for a couple of hours. The WAF took a BIG hit that time :)
 
I just realised something... I have 2 USB 3.0 ports and 1 eSATA port on the back of my motherboard. I just need to find an enclosure for my hard drive and I can have a proper mirror. Or even better, I can just place the disk in my case, connect it to my PSU and then route a SATA - eSATA cable to the back of the motherboard.

Why didn't I think of this sooner :/.
 
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