PeterB

You say that your build is almost identical to the one you reference, yet you select a higher capacity psu? Why not stick to 750w as in the system you're emulating?

IIRC, the ATX2.2 standard specified a current limit for any one rail, but the 2.3 standard changed that.

It should do, yes. Hmmm ... LSI appear to have changed their product line and their website, so my link no longer works. Perhaps I should host the essential programs on my own site.

I guess that it's possible that the most worn keys might give a clue to passwords.

Thanks for your suggestion. I can obtain the Supermicro products here. Although comparatively expensive, I'm sure that the cost of shipping from USofA would negate any savings made by purchasing from a stateside supplier. My real problem is that the Supermicro is not my first choice - I really want trayless, and favour the iStarUSA BPN-350. My big problem is finding a mechanism for purchasing and shipping iStar products.

Send me a 3TB drive and I'll test it on my Supermicro AOC-USAS2-L8i. Supermicro claim that it does support 3TB.

Maybe the chipset used in this card? http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-SAS2LP-MV8.cfm I doubt it - surely that card uses the mvSATA-supported x8 chip. The guy was talking about a new series of chips, which are AHCI-compliant and only available in x1 form at present, with the x2 currently sampling.

Flash to Phase9 firmware went relatively easily and the card has been functioning perfectly. All of this has been achieved within the unRAID environment - no need to remove the card, no need to boot any other O/S. mpt2sas0: LSISAS2008: FWVersion(09.00.00.00), ChipRevision(0x02), BiosVersion(07.17.00.00) mpt2sas0: Protocol=(Initiator,Target), Capabilities=(TLR,EEDP,Snapshot Buffer,Diag Trace Buffer,Task Set Full,NCQ)

The odd thing about the way those cards have been spaced is that the backplate goes in slot 1 and the card plugs into the slot 2 socket. It really needs to be spaced on the other side! Anyway, I still have my card unsupported.

Not being a Microsoft devotee, I don't have a windows system in which to flash my AOC-USAS2-L8i, so I had wasted a lot of time trying to create a bootable DOS usb stick. I have reported, elsewhere, that I had received a rather unhelpful error message when trying to flash under DOS. After some research, I discovered that sas2fl(a)sh needs a largish amount of memory for workspace - I suspect that I wasn't getting sufficient EMS/XMS/whatever memory allocated. I also tried to find out how to use the UEFI version, but didn't find sufficient information on UEFI to work out how to do that. Anyway, I have just managed to reflash my card from IR to IT mode in the unRAID server, without even bothering to stop the array! In the end, it turns out to be very simple, although there were a couple of 'gotchas' on the way. I downloaded the linux version of the sas2flash program from the LSI site. I first tried the phase9 version, then the phase8 version, but both refused to cross-flash IR<->IT. Also, for some reason, the flash erase option (-e) is reported as not being implemented under linux. I suspect that the phase7 version would be okay for cross-flashing, but I couldn't find a copy. However, the phase5 version is still available in the LSI archives. So, I used this version, with the phase7 firmware and rom images which I retrieved from the supermicro site. I may try, in a minute, to flash the phase9 images (which I should now be able to do with the phase9 sas2flash). root@Tower:/mnt/cache/.hide/SAS2008# sas2flash5 -list **************************************************************************** LSI Corporation SAS2Flash Utility. Version 5.00.00.00 (2010.02.10) Copyright (c) 2009 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved. **************************************************************************** Adapter Selected is a LSI SAS: SAS2008(B1) Controller Number : 0 Controller : SAS2008(B1) PCI Address : 00:01:00:00 SAS Address : 5003048-0-041f-4c00 NVDATA Version (Default) : 07.00.00.03 NVDATA Version (Persistant) : 07.00.00.03 Firmware Product ID : 0x2713 Firmware Version : 07.00.00.00 NVDATA Vendor : LSI NVDATA Product ID : SAS2008-IR BIOS Version : 07.11.00.00 UEFI BSD Version : N/A FCODE Version : N/A Finished Processing Commands Successfully. Exiting SAS2Flash. root@Tower:/mnt/cache/.hide/SAS2008# sas2flash5 -o -f SMC2008.FW -b mptsas2.rom **************************************************************************** LSI Corporation SAS2Flash Utility. Version 5.00.00.00 (2010.02.10) Copyright (c) 2009 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved. **************************************************************************** Advanced Mode Set Adapter Selected is a LSI SAS: SAS2008(B1) Executing Operation: Flash Firmware Image Firmware Image has a Valid Checksum. Firmware Image compatible with Controller. Valid NVDATA Image found. NVDATA Versions Compatible. NVDATA Product ID and Vendor ID do not match. Would you like to flash anyway [y/n]? y Valid Initialization Image verified. Valid BootLoader Image verified. Beginning Firmware Download... Firmware Download Successful. Verifying Download... Firmware Flash Successful! Resetting Adapter... Adapter Successfully Reset. Executing Operation: Flash BIOS Image Validating BIOS Image... BIOS Header Signature is Valid BIOS Image has a Valid Checksum. BIOS PCI Structure Signature Valid. BIOS Image Compatible with the SAS Controller. Attempting to Flash BIOS Image... Flash BIOS Image Successful. Finished Processing Commands Successfully. Exiting SAS2Flash. root@Tower:/mnt/cache/.hide/SAS2008# sas2flash5 -list **************************************************************************** LSI Corporation SAS2Flash Utility. Version 5.00.00.00 (2010.02.10) Copyright (c) 2009 LSI Corporation. All rights reserved. **************************************************************************** Adapter Selected is a LSI SAS: SAS2008(B1) Controller Number : 0 Controller : SAS2008(B1) PCI Address : 00:01:00:00 SAS Address : 5003048-0-041f-4c00 NVDATA Version (Default) : 07.00.00.03 NVDATA Version (Persistant) : 07.00.00.03 Firmware Product ID : 0x2213 Firmware Version : 07.00.00.00 NVDATA Vendor : LSI NVDATA Product ID : SAS2008-IT BIOS Version : 07.11.00.00 UEFI BSD Version : N/A FCODE Version : N/A Finished Processing Commands Successfully. Exiting SAS2Flash. root@Tower:/mnt/cache/.hide/SAS2008# sas2flash phase5 is available here. The supermicro-issued firmware is available here. Now, that was a whole lot easier than finding a box running windows, and moving the card!

Can you post some pictures of the card installed into the server? Okay, I can do ... but be warned that it's installed without a backplate fitted at the moment. It's now past midnight, so I'll get my camera out in the morning.

Indeed, it looks to be a decent case to put your drives in. What case will you use for your motherboard/processor, and what connections will you use between the two enclosures.

The SAS2008 cards should all be capable of negotiating a narrower bus.

I found this posted on the Australian Overclockers forum: From this, I take it that any of the SAS2008-based cards should support drives over 2.2TB. Perhaps, in a couple of years, I'll be able to obtain a 3TB drive in Philippines, and test it out! OTOH, if anyone would like to send me a drive, I'll report back!

As an experiment, I've commented out all the occurrences of '-d ata' from the unMENU code. As far as I can tell, this has made unMENU and the LSI SAS2008 based controller fully compatible (or is it the mpt2sas driver?) - I now get temperatures reported and I can successfully obtain SMART reports.

Was this on sdx devices or only on hdx devices? I can't see why the "-d ata" should have ever been needed for sata drives. If, as I suspect, it was only needed on pata devices then, perhaps, it should be made dependent on the device type (hdx/sdx) specification.

The reason for the SMART failures appears to be due to to the fact that the smartctl command is being issued with the device switch '-d ata'. This appears to be accepted by standard sata devices/drivers, but the hba/mpt2sas driver appears to complain. Leaving the device switch at auto '-d auto', or setting it to scsi to ata translation '-d sat', appears to work fine for both standard on-board sata interfaces and the hba interfaces. I guess that '-d sat' would fail on a legacy ata/ide interface. I wonder why preclear and unMENU use the '-d ata' switch ... I'm sure that there was a good reason! Ah, on preclear, there is a -D option to supress the use of '-d ata', and a -d option to override the '-d ata' with another device type. ..... Yes, both options work fine, ie: 'preclear_disk.sh -D /dev/sdd', or 'preclear_disk.sh -d sat /dev/sdd' So, the question remains ... why was the '-d ata' added? Perhaps the default should be altered to not use '-d' on the smartctl command (which defaults to auto), and let users specify the '-d ata' option when/where necessary. I'm now off to find whether there is a similar control/override for unMENU .....

I can confirm that, for me at least, all spindown problems relating to the AOC USAS2 L8i appear to be resolved with the latest 'testing' version of unRAID.

I've been unsuccessful in flashing the IT firmware - as I've posted in another thread, there seems to be some incompatibility between my mobo and the flash program. However, since the syslog entry tells me that the card is running in IT mode, I'll ignore this for the time being. I have now moved three data drives onto the L8i interface and the system rebooted and came up perfectly. All seems to be well, except for the SMART/temperature readings in preclear and unMENU. However, temperatures are still available in the standard browser interface. Everytime a drive is spun down, I get an ioctl error in the syslog but, according to the UI, the drive is still spun down (I have each drive assigned to its own spinup group). I'm just downloading the new test firmware to see whether the situation is resolved with Tom's latest change. Anyway, as far as I can determine, the Supermicro AOC-USAS2-L8i controller is pretty well compatible with unRAID (but not with all add-ons). I'm pleased that I have the Supermicro 'UIO' card layout. The main chip/heatsink on the card does seem to get quite warm, so it's good that it is on top rather than underneath. Also, this orientation puts the heatsink directly in line with the cpu fan in my system. Oh, and it's also very easy to see the onboard leds for drive activity/fault, looking through the viewing panel on the side cover, or through the top fan aperture.

Not that I'm aware of. I'm using the version I downloaded from here.

I have been attempting to re-flash my Supermicro AOC-USAS2-L8i (LSI 2008-based), using the dos reflash utility and image files as found on the Supermicro site. As soon as I run sas2flsh, irrespective of what switches I apply, I get an error 'Failed to initialize PAL ...'. The only reference to this error I can find anywhere is on the LSI knowledge base where it offers, rather unhelpfully, "... you will need to flash in a different system/motherboard". Since I only have two, almost identical mobos, I appear to be rather stuck. Can anyone offer any insights as to why this error should occur and whether there might be any way to make the flash work in my motherboard?

Pre-clear completed, but still doesn't report any SMART data: ================================================================== 1.11 = unRAID server Pre-Clear disk /dev/sdg = cycle 1 of 1, partition start on sector 64 = Disk Pre-Clear-Read completed DONE = Step 1 of 10 - Copying zeros to first 2048k bytes DONE = Step 2 of 10 - Copying zeros to remainder of disk to clear it DONE = Step 3 of 10 - Disk is now cleared from MBR onward. DONE = Step 4 of 10 - Clearing MBR bytes for partition 2,3 & 4 DONE = Step 5 of 10 - Clearing MBR code area DONE = Step 6 of 10 - Setting MBR signature bytes DONE = Step 7 of 10 - Setting partition 1 to precleared state DONE = Step 8 of 10 - Notifying kernel we changed the partitioning DONE = Step 9 of 10 - Creating the /dev/disk/by* entries DONE = Step 10 of 10 - Verifying if the MBR is cleared. DONE = Disk Post-Clear-Read completed DONE Elapsed Time: 5:54:19 ========================================================================1.11 == == Disk /dev/sdg has been successfully precleared == with a starting sector of 64 ============================================================================ No SMART attributes are FAILING_NOW the number of sectors pending re-allocation did not change. the number of sectors re-allocated did not change. SMART overall-health status = root@Tower:~# ... and, if I invoke Smart Status from unMENU, I get: SMART status Info for /dev/sdg smartctl 5.40 2010-10-16 r3189 [i486-slackware-linux-gnu] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net Smartctl: Device Read Identity Failed (not an ATA/ATAPI device) A mandatory SMART command failed: exiting. To continue, add one or more '-T permissive' options. However, smartctl produces a full report without any difficulty, so it would appear that preclear and unMENU are doing something odd: root@Tower:~# smartctl -a /dev/sdg smartctl 5.40 2010-10-16 r3189 [i486-slackware-linux-gnu] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-10 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net === START OF INFORMATION SECTION === Model Family: SAMSUNG SpinPoint F3 series Device Model: SAMSUNG HD502HJ Serial Number: S20BJ90Z601039 Firmware Version: 1AJ10001 User Capacity: 500,107,862,016 bytes Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show] ATA Version is: 8 ATA Standard is: ATA-8-ACS revision 6 Local Time is: Sat May 21 11:03:44 2011 SGT SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability. SMART support is: Enabled === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED General SMART Values: Offline data collection status: (0x00) Offline data collection activity was never started. Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled. Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed without error or no self-test has ever been run. Total time to complete Offline data collection: (4740) seconds. Offline data collection capabilities: (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate. Auto Offline data collection on/off support. Suspend Offline collection upon new command. Offline surface scan supported. Self-test supported. No Conveyance Self-test supported. Selective Self-test supported. SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering power-saving mode. Supports SMART auto save timer. Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported. General Purpose Logging supported. Short self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes. Extended self-test routine recommended polling time: ( 79) minutes. SCT capabilities: (0x003f) SCT Status supported. SCT Error Recovery Control supported. SCT Feature Control supported. SCT Data Table supported. SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 100 100 051 Pre-fail Always - 0 2 Throughput_Performance 0x0026 056 056 000 Old_age Always - 4295 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0023 083 083 025 Pre-fail Always - 5308 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 6 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 252 252 010 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 252 252 051 Old_age Always - 0 8 Seek_Time_Performance 0x0024 252 252 015 Old_age Offline - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 44 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 252 252 051 Old_age Always - 0 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 252 252 000 Old_age Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 6 191 G-Sense_Error_Rate 0x0022 252 252 000 Old_age Always - 0 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0022 252 252 000 Old_age Always - 0 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0002 063 058 000 Old_age Always - 37 (Min/Max 29/45) 195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered 0x003a 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 252 252 000 Old_age Always - 0 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 252 252 000 Old_age Always - 0 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 252 252 000 Old_age Offline - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0036 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x002a 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 223 Load_Retry_Count 0x0032 252 252 000 Old_age Always - 0 225 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 6 SMART Error Log Version: 1 No Errors Logged SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1 Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error # 1 Short offline Completed without error 00% 19 - # 2 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 15 - # 3 Short offline Completed without error 00% 14 - # 4 Short offline Completed without error 00% 14 - # 5 Short offline Completed without error 00% 14 - # 6 Short offline Completed without error 00% 14 - Note: selective self-test log revision number (0) not 1 implies that no selective self-test has ever been run SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 0 Note: revision number not 1 implies that no selective self-test has ever been run SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS 1 0 0 Completed [00% left] (0-65535) 2 0 0 Not_testing 3 0 0 Not_testing 4 0 0 Not_testing 5 0 0 Not_testing Selective self-test flags (0x0): After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk. If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay. root@Tower:~#

I believe that it's x8.

Errr .. from the only Supermicro reseller in this part of the Philippines ... and too much - PHP9,550 (around USD210)! Thanks for the other advices and suggestions - I'll work on those.

I received my Supermicro AOC-USAS2-L8i card today. As a quick resume, this is an 8-port SAS/SATA card, using the LSI SAS 2008 controller chip. It supports SATA3 6Gb/s transfers and has a PCIe 2.0 x8 host interface. Actually, Supermicro call the interface 'UIO', but all this means is that the card is made the 'wrong way round' - the majority of the components and the backplate are on the opposite side to what they should be for a standard PCI card. I actually see this as an advantage because, in a standard tower case, the heatsink is on the upper side of the card, where it can work effectively, rather than being on the underneath. However, it does mean that the backplate has to be removed (and refitted with spacers, if you wish to support the card in the conventional way in a PCIe slot). The other thing to note about this card is that it has RAID functionality build in (there is an AOC-USAS2-L8e card which is plain JBOD, but it is more expensive!). Anyway, within minutes of arriving home with the card, I'd removed the backplate and plugged it into the PCIe x16 'video card slot' on my Intel mobo. I'd already concluded that this bus slot is not a 'dedicated' video slot. unRAID 5.0 beta6 booted straight up and ran with no problems. The syslog file indicates that the card is recognised by the mpt2sas driver. Log entries do suggest that the card is flashed with the RAID firmware (IR mode), but it still seems to be able to operate in JBOD (IT mode) - Protocol=(Initiator, Target) . root@Tower:~# grep mpt2 /var/log/syslog May 20 23:21:16 Tower kernel: mpt2sas version 06.100.00.00 loaded May 20 23:21:16 Tower kernel: mpt2sas 0000:01:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16 May 20 23:21:16 Tower kernel: mpt2sas 0000:01:00.0: setting latency timer to 64 May 20 23:21:16 Tower kernel: mpt2sas0: 64 BIT PCI BUS DMA ADDRESSING SUPPORTED, total mem (3942652 kB) May 20 23:21:16 Tower kernel: mpt2sas 0000:01:00.0: irq 41 for MSI/MSI-X May 20 23:21:16 Tower kernel: mpt2sas0: PCI-MSI-X enabled: IRQ 41 May 20 23:21:16 Tower kernel: mpt2sas0: iomem(0x00000000fe4c0000), mapped(0xf8558000), size(16384) May 20 23:21:16 Tower kernel: mpt2sas0: ioport(0x000000000000e000), size(256) May 20 23:21:16 Tower kernel: mpt2sas0: sending diag reset !! May 20 23:21:16 Tower kernel: mpt2sas0: diag reset: SUCCESS May 20 23:21:16 Tower kernel: mpt2sas0: Allocated physical memory: size(839 kB) May 20 23:21:16 Tower kernel: mpt2sas0: Current Controller Queue Depth(339), Max Controller Queue Depth(2239) May 20 23:21:16 Tower kernel: mpt2sas0: Scatter Gather Elements per IO(128) May 20 23:21:16 Tower kernel: mpt2sas0: LSISAS2008: FWVersion(07.00.00.00), ChipRevision(0x02), BiosVersion(07.11.00.00) May 20 23:21:16 Tower kernel: mpt2sas0: Protocol=(Initiator,Target), Capabilities=(Raid,TLR,EEDP,Snapshot Buffer,Diag Trace Buffer,Task Set Full,NCQ) May 20 23:21:16 Tower kernel: mpt2sas0: sending port enable !! May 20 23:21:16 Tower kernel: mpt2sas0: host_add: handle(0x0001), sas_addr(0x50030480041f4c00), phys( May 20 23:21:16 Tower kernel: mpt2sas0: port enable: SUCCESS root@Tower:~# I then shut unRAID down, and connected up a spare Samsung HD502HJ (512GB) drive. I am in the middle of preclearing this drive and during Step 2 'Copying zeros to remainder of disk ....' it is reporting a rate in excess of 120MB/s (at 90% complete). The only slight issue I've noted so far is that it is claimed not to be able to access SMART data. I'm sure that I've read of this problem with other cards and that there is a work-around - I will research this tomorrow. When the preclear has finished, I will try moving a couple of my array drives to the new card - if I understand correctly, unRAID 5b6 should be unfazed by this and should start and run as normal. I've just noticed that the preclear has completed the ten steps and is now on the Post-Read, reporting 120+MB/s. As far as I can tell, so far, the SM AOC-USAS2-L8i card is compatible with unRAID, with the slight proviso, that something needs to be tweaked to persuade it to give up the SMART data. I will download the alternat firmwares from the SM site, and experiment to see whether there is any noticeable change from using the IT firmware. If any one can think of other things I could, or should, test, then let me know. To be continued ......