Hi, 

just switched from TrueNAS to Unraid. 

The LSI SAS2008 controller (flashed and used in IT Mode) was working perfectly fine under TrueNAS. I just deleted TrueNAS and did not change a thing on the controller but after having installed Unraid the HDDs connect to the controller can not be seen under "Main". 

Unraid "System info" shows that "IOMMU" is activated, when I look under "Tools/System Devices" you see:
"IOMMU group 13:[1000:0072] 02:00.0 Serial Attached SCSI controller: Broadcom / LSI SAS2008 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2 [Falcon] (rev 03)"

Activating "Bind select group 13 to vfio at boot" and rebooting doesn't change a thing, still no hdds connected to the controller can be seen. 

I connected one SSD to the onboard SATA Controller of my Supermicro X13SAE-F, this SSD can be seen in "Main". 

Thank you very much in advance for sharing your thoughts, ideas and productive criticism. :-) 

   

 

Edited December 27, 20232 yr by Mr.Slumber

Please post the diagnostics.

23 hours ago, JorgeB said:

Please post the diagnostics.

 I hope I've done this right? Thank you in advance. 

Edited December 27, 20232 yr by Mr.Slumber

HBA is failing to initialize:

 

Dec 26 19:26:20 unraid kernel: mpt2sas_cm0: failure at drivers/scsi/mpt3sas/mpt3sas_scsih.c:12348/_scsih_probe()!

 

Not a common issue, but try a different PCIe slot if possible and/or this.

2 minutes ago, JorgeB said:

HBA is failing to initialize:

 

Dec 26 19:26:20 unraid kernel: mpt2sas_cm0: failure at drivers/scsi/mpt3sas/mpt3sas_scsih.c:12348/_scsih_probe()!

 

Not a common issue, but try a different PCIe slot if possible and/or this.

Will try both and keep you posted! Thank you very much for your quick reply and help! Already loving this forum! 

Did both things you suggested but still no HDDs to be seen if they're connected to the LSI SAS2008... 

Any ideas? Thank you in advance. 

Try booting a different OS, like Ubuntu live flash or Truenas Scale to confirm the HBA is still working. 

Did all of this, even exchanged the controller for an LSI HBA 9201-8i (also flashed to IT mode)... everytime the same. No disks to be seen. 

 

The problem seems to be the BIOS setup of the SuperMicro X13SAE-F. Because it will only boot in UEFI mode (there's no setting to boot in legacy mode) it's not possible to hit "CTRL-C" in POST so you can't change controller settings. You can change the LSI controller settings when you're in the X13SAE-F BIOS settings, please see attached screenshots. So there it is possible to disable legacy boot but nothing changes. When being in the LSI BIOS via the X13SAE-F BIOS the controller sees all HDDs which are attached (screenshot below) BUT outside of the LSI BIOS so when you're back in the X13SAE-F BIOS you should e.g. be able to select the HDD you want which is attached to the controller. This is not the case because the X13SAE-F BIOS sees only "UEFI hard disk" but this is just generic and not one of the HDDs being attached to the controller. 

So: if the BIOS can't see the LSI controller attached HDDs I think neither Unraid nor Ubuntu etc. are able to see the HDDs later on. The card worked perfectly with TrueNAS for 4 years but the reason was (I think) that everything was legacy boot and not UEFI... 

Really don't know what do to tried every possible BIOS setup in the X13SAE-F and the controller cards BIOS but it just won't work. Perhaps anyone that has a X13SAE-F mobo can answer how the boot their machine with which settings. 

Thank you :-) 


 

not possible to select any HDD attached to LSI HBA

 

 

 

inside the LSI HBA BIOS all 6 attached disks are seen

 

 

 

inside LSI HBA BIOS I disabled legacy boot but that solved nothing...

 

Edited December 27, 20232 yr by Mr.Slumber

UEFI boot should not be a problem, and the controller may be seeing the disks in the BIOS, problem is that it's failing to initialize the driver correctly, and if it happens with other OSes, it could be a compatibility issue with that board.

Thank you @JorgeB for all your help! 

 

I wasted too much time on troubleshooting so I kicked the LSI HBA 9201 out, wired all my disks directly to the mobo and its 8 Sata ports and bought an Adaptec 1430SA for the remaining HDDs. The Adaptec 1430SA hasn't arrived yet but the rest works like charm and up until now I'm happy with my Unraid setup. Let's see what happens when parity sync is through... 
Lesson learned: no LSI SAS2008 / LSI HBA 9201-8I for me anymore... 

Just a short update for anyone who is interested: I found the LSI HBA 9201-8I was a very reliable HBA for many years in my TrueNAS servers BUT not for this actual built. So without it, everything is working just fine for me with this built and being an Unraid "firsttimer" I must say that I really love Unraid!!!   Filling my array with precleared HDDs atm and it's just a "smooth sailing" along with Docker, this fantastic community and all the community apps. It's fun and thanks to everybody being involved with Unraid.