I went about booting into a new TrueNas Scale env, and I was unable to locate the drives. There was not an issue with mpt being unable to start or anything. I cannot remember all of the sas2flash commands off of the top of my head, but it basically came down to me being able to view the JBOD with the sas controller, but the drive bays were unpopulated. I went about updating the firmware, yet nothing changed. I eventually found that people reported issues with drives not showing up if the NVDATA default was different from the persistent.
I was unable to actually use sas2flash -o -e 6/7 (both would error out for some reason) I went about getting into MSDOS and trying to utilize megarec, but I kept getting an error about RC not being found or something? Nevertheless, I eventually found another suggestion on ServeTheHome, I’m unsure if I can link, but basically it was suggesting to flash with supermicro firmware, even if the card wasn’t it. I attempted to do this on two cards, but both errored out and the IOC cannot be found. I haven’t attempted to revive them in MS-DOS, but at least in Linux, they seem actually dead now.
I’ll take literally any advice about how to continue. I’m trying to get my first homelab up and running, and I’ve spent over a week of my free time trying to get this functional. I’ll supply any information needed. Thank you in advance.
Have you tried simplifying your setup? HBA and just a disk or two attached as a test or just to sort out the HBA or HBAs?
It helps if you mention your complete setup, os version ,etc. I had to look up all your info as your really didn’t list details on the drives for example. I had to do an internet search. If you had listed things like WD Ultrastar 7K4000 SAS HUS724040ALS640 it would have been more helpful
Please post the results from running the sas2flash command from this post. It will give everyone a starting post with one of the HBA cards. Please post the output with Preformatted text option
My apologies about the limited information I provided. I did not think full hardware would be relevant since the issue seems to be limited in scope. The OS version and exact SAS drive by name was an oversight though.
TrueNas Scale version: 24.04.1.1
Yes, I’ve attempted it with just 1-2 drives. As for the drives themselves, here’s that information. HGST 4TB SAS 3.5" Hard Drive HDD - 7.2K / 6Gbps
I’ve seen online that some people report having issues with the drives being unable to detect if they’re rebranded/OEM versions by Oracle or Sun, thankfully these are neither.
I’m unable to grab that information from the current SAS controller. Here the results, but me retyping it from a photo. I did not get SSH setup on it yet.
sas2flash -list
No LSI SAS adapters found! Limited Command Set Available:
ERROR: Command Not allowed without an adapter!
ERROR: Couldn’t Create Command -list
Exiting Program
This all being said, I do actually have the results of command from the SECOND SAS card I attempted to use. Just to clarify though, this is from last night, and the card is now doing the exact same thing as the current one.
./sas2flash -c 0 -list -l hba-1.log
Adapter Selected is a LSI SAS: SAS2116_1(B1)
Controller Number : 0
Controller : SAS2116_1(B1)
PCI Address : 00:01:00:00
SAS Address : 5000d31-0-0029-ec3f
NVDATA Version (Default) : 14.01.00.07
NVDATA Version (Persistent) : 14.01.00.14
Firmware Product ID : 0x2213 (IT)
Firmware Version : 20.00.07.00
NVDATA Vendor : LSI
NVDATA Product ID : SAS9201-16e
BIOS Version : N/A
UEFI BSD Version : N/A
FCODE Version : N/A
Board Name : SAS9201-16e
Board Assembly : H3-25379-01D
Board Tracer Number : SV11313258
Finished Processing Commands Successfully.
Exiting SAS2Flash.
The differing NVDATA Versions have been reported, from my findings at least, to result in the issue I’m having. It’s why I went about flashing the firmware. I can link the various documents I followed if you’d like.
You have tested with so many HBAs now that perhaps the issue was always somewhere else, like the cabling, the backplane, the disks, etc.
Simplify what you can, test the drives in a different computer if you can, try a direct connection between the HBA and the drives using a breakout cable and so on.
Gotcha. I did go about ordering different sff8088 cable. I’ll also be picking up a drive dock to test a couple with.
I do believe the two HBA’s that I eventually bricked, to be defective to some degree. The current one has matching NVDATA, which was extremely promising in comparison.
Nevertheless, I’ll test once I get both of those, and report back any results.
Forgive my ignorance, but does a sff8088 breakout cable exist? I was under the impression that they’re normally sata breakout cables. It’s my first time utilizing any sort of commercial/homelab equipment, so it’s been a learning experience.
I’m unsure if there is. I couldn’t find anything from my limited google searching. I’ll be testing the drives tomorrow, and the cable should also be arriving. I learned from taking a deeper look at the drives, there’s actually two different models among them.
An update, connected a new SFF8088 cable to the backup/secondary SAS connector on the JBOD - drives still do not detect. I also went about connecting a known good SATA drive with my interposers (303-115-003D). The SATA drive is not being detected by sas2flash either, nor the OS. At this point is it fair to assume it’s the JBOD? It’s receiving a PCI/SAS address, so I’d assume it’s not a connection issue with the motherboard, but ultimately that’s outside of my knowledge.
So, a bit of an update, after attempting to boot into Truenas Core instead, I’m now given the wall of, mps0: IOC in unexpected reset state. I went about resetting the HBA and reflashing it, it fixed the mps0 issue, yet the drives are still not displaying. The issue reflects that of Scale.
I also went about attempting to boot into the card’s BIOS via CTRL+C, now that it’s flashed with a BIOS, but it seems I’m unable to. This could likely be due to the modern components, I’m unsure. I disabled all boots, and enabled CSM. I also turned off quick boot, and increased the POST delay. Even Enabled Interrupt 19 Capture. Nevertheless, I’ve reached out to the JBOD seller, and I’m awaiting his thoughts. If anyone else has any ideas, please let me know.
