[Solution] No disks detected after 6.2 beta upgrade (ESXi passthrough issue)


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Problem:

I was having issues where no disks were detected after upgrading to 6.2.0-beta21 from 6.1. When I looked at the unRaid syslog, I saw this:

mpt2sas_cm0: failure at drivers/scsi/mpt3sas/mpt3sas_scsih.c:8592/_scsih_probe()!

 

Setup:

I'm running unRaid on ESXI 6.0 using the PLOP boot method. I have my hard drives attached to a m1015, which is flashed to LSI9211-8I IT mode (running I think firmware v20). Also the m1015 is setup for passthrough in ESXi to unRaid.

 

Solution:

I believe the drives not being detected is due to the firmware version. I did not attempt to downgrade the firmware. After reading posts from others, this is an issue with 6.2 and ESXi passthrough. Not a firmware issue.

 

After much research, I found someone having similar issues with running Ubuntu on ESXI w/ passthrough. The workaround solution was to add mpt3sas.msix_disable=1 option to the syslinux config. See full syslinux config below. Drives are now showing up as normal. Hope this helps someone else  ;)

 

Syslinux Configuration:

default /syslinux/menu.c32

menu title Lime Technology, Inc.

prompt 0

timeout 50

label unRAID OS

  menu default

  kernel /bzimage

  append mpt3sas.msix_disable=1 initrd=/bzroot

label unRAID OS GUI Mode

  kernel /bzimage

  append initrd=/bzroot,/bzroot-gui

label unRAID OS Safe Mode (no plugins, no GUI)

  kernel /bzimage

  append initrd=/bzroot unraidsafemode

label Memtest86+

  kernel /memtest

 

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Interesting, I'm going to have to give this a try on my setup and see if it works since the hardware passthrough not working is the only thing stopping me from upgrading to 6.2.

 

EDIT: It worked!  Thanks for this.  Upgraded my backup server to 6.2 and will do some testing over the next week to determine if it's stable enough for me to upgrade my main server as well.

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That's awesome! Glad I was able to help.  ;D

 

I'm still not 100% sure if disabling MSI-X is a big deal. Let me know if you run into any issues...

 

According to the discussion here, this is an ESXi bug and will be fixed in the 6.0p3/5.5p8 release.

 

Thanks so much for this, and for reaching out! 

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 months later...

Yes. This is still required after the release of 6.2.

 

Thanks.  I'll have this in my bag of tricks when I next set aside time to troubleshoot an upgrade.  Any idea if this configuration change would be required for this card?  This is the one I'm currently passing through to my unRAID VM.  It's not a great card, but it serves my needs for now, until I need more or larger drives.

 

http://vb.net/products/LSILOGIC/lsiSAS3041ERds.pdf

 

Thanks,

 

John

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for this.  Glad I kept this thread opened in a tab in Chrome.  When I upgraded from 5.x to 6.2, I rebooted the Unraid VM but didn't reboot the ESXi box.  Today I figured I should just to see if I would run into this or not and I did.  After ESXi and Unraid came back up, no disks were found.  Made the changes in the syslinux.cfg, rebooted and drives were back.

 

Thanks again.  Without this, I would have been really frustrated :)

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Yes. This is still required after the release of 6.2.

 

Thanks.  I'll have this in my bag of tricks when I next set aside time to troubleshoot an upgrade.  Any idea if this configuration change would be required for this card?  This is the one I'm currently passing through to my unRAID VM.  It's not a great card, but it serves my needs for now, until I need more or larger drives.

 

http://vb.net/products/LSILOGIC/lsiSAS3041ERds.pdf

 

 

FYI - I upgraded my unRAID VM on ESXi 6.0 from 6.1.9 to 6.2.1 today, and did not need to add this boot change.

The driver on my machine (what I see when the physical machine boots) is:

  LSI Corporation MPT SAS BIOS

  MPTBIOS-6.22.00.00 (2008.04.10)

  Copyright 2000-2008 LSI Corporation

 

But thanks to this thread, I was ready in case I needed it.  I did also restart my ESXi server in the process.

 

John

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