tstor Posted December 17, 2017 Share Posted December 17, 2017 Currently my array consists of 9 data disks plus 2 parity, additionally there are three unassigned disks ready for pre-clearing. So in total the 16 port LSI 9201-16i controls 14 disks. Today I had to reboot for another problem, I discovered the following warnings during the first stages of booting when the controller initialized: "failed to add device, too many devices!" "Warning: Run-time memory allocation was exceeded" Internet searches provided the following findings: Dell forum: "BIOS must be turned off or it will display those errors when there are around 30 drives or more connected." Supermicro forum: "The problem is caused by the BIOS of the 9200-8E. The card running on the newer bios (R7.25) is not able to recognize more than 2 chassis. Please contact LSI to get earlier bios R7.24 that works fine to support more than 2 chassis." I neither have more than 30 devices nor do I known what multiple chassis means in this context and those posts also concern a different LSI based controller. The disks are on hot-swap backplanes, therefore I did add new disks without rebooting and cannot say after which disk the warnings started. However I would assume that a 16 port controller can at least handle 16 disks, even more with one that claims port-multiplier support. Any experiences or ideas? Quote Link to comment
remotevisitor Posted December 17, 2017 Share Posted December 17, 2017 (edited) Which Unraid license do you have? I suspect the Plus license. 9 data disks + 2 parity + 3 unassigned = 14 disks. The plus license only allows 12 connected disks (checked at boot time). If you have the Pro license then the problem is something else. Update: Ah, just realised from your description that your error is probably occurring during the Bios initialisation which is before Unraid gets in so is probably something else. Edited December 17, 2017 by remotevisitor Quote Link to comment
tstor Posted December 17, 2017 Author Share Posted December 17, 2017 It’s a pro license and the card bios complains before even the first line of unRAID code is executed Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted December 17, 2017 Share Posted December 17, 2017 You could try re-flashing the controller without a bios, bios is only needed if you need to boot from a device on the HBA. Quote Link to comment
SSD Posted December 17, 2017 Share Posted December 17, 2017 I have this controller and do not have the problem you are having. I am not clear where you are seeing the error. Is it as the HBA is initializing, or is it at the server is trying to boot (and it is the motherboard bios reporting the problem). I remember having issues on an older server when I had too many drives connected and the BIOS couldn't handle that many possible bootable drives. By making the controller unbootable (disabling an interrupt) or configuring drives as non-bootable, I was able to resolve. Take a picture of the error and post it you are stl having issues. It will clarify if the hba firmware or the motherboard bios is reporting the problem. Quote Link to comment
tstor Posted December 17, 2017 Author Share Posted December 17, 2017 6 minutes ago, SSD said: Is it as the HBA is initializing Yes, it's during loading of the controller BIOS, the display on screen is: LSI Corporation MPT SAS2 BIOS MPT2BIOS-7.37.00.00 (2014.03.19) Copyright 2000-2014 LSI Corporation Initializing../ a few seconds later, afaik it's now looking for other LSI controllers Press Ctrl-C to start LSI Corp Configuration Utility... a few seconds later, afaik it's now scanning for disks on the found controllers, in my case currently only this one Searching for devices at HBA 0... a few seconds later WARNING: Failed to add device, too many devices! followed by a table of nine found devices, the first being the controller itself (SAS2116-IT, 19.00.00.00,11:00:00:06), then the first eight disks. PCI SLOT obviously is always the same ENCL SLOT goes from 0 to 7 LUN NUM is always 0 followed by a table with the next six devices, I have this in slots 8 to 10 for the remaining array devices, then one empty and 12 to 14 for the new disks. a few seconds later LSI Corporation MPT2 boot ROM successfully installed! WARNING: Run-time memory allocation was exceeded! WARNING: Run-time memory allocation was exceeded! The boot process the continues with the on-board SATA controller and finally the rest of BIOS and OS boot. The array disks are all 8TB, the three new ones are 12TB in case this could play a role. The HBA should be able to support up to 512 devices when combined with multipliers, so the fourteen I have should not cause any issues. I think it is just related to not being able to select a boot disk from one of that many devices, but I don't remember having seen such an option. I'll have to look again whether I can disable booting from the HBA. What version do you run? I have seen that there is a package P20 on Broadcom's site containing BIOS 7.39.02.00. Quote Link to comment
tstor Posted December 17, 2017 Author Share Posted December 17, 2017 (edited) In "Adapter Properties" I have now changed "Boot Support" from "Enabled BIOS & OS" to "Enabled OS only". Now the BIOS boot screens of the HBA are skipped except for a short notice that HBA configuration can be invoked using Ctrl-C. I think this supports the guess, that the limit is just related to the number of disks from which could be booted. Does anyone have an idea, where this limit is? I did not find anything documented in the HBA User Guide. (see next posts) Edited December 17, 2017 by tstor Quote Link to comment
tstor Posted December 17, 2017 Author Share Posted December 17, 2017 Alas, now I can no longer see, whether all disks have been discovered by the adapter. This could be helpful when debugging other issues. I wonder whether the error messages actually have an impact once the OS takes over or if they just relate to the boot process. In other words, could I go back and ignore the errors? Quote Link to comment
tstor Posted December 17, 2017 Author Share Posted December 17, 2017 Digging through all the menus in the LSI configuration utility I found out that the HBA should be able to install pre-boot support for up to 24 devices, so my 14 should not be a problem. I also found out that you can select one disk as preferred boot device, a second one as alternate. Maybe it is just a small software bug resulting in a misleading error message if none of the disks has been set as preferred or alternate boot device. Quote Link to comment
itimpi Posted December 17, 2017 Share Posted December 17, 2017 Does the HBA configuration screen have an option for enabling/disabling interrupt 13? Normally disabling that one stops the drives being seen as bootable. Disabling this interrupt is necessary if the motherboard BIOS has a limit on how many bootable devices it can handle. You definitely want all of the unRAID array devices to be treated as not bootable. Quote Link to comment
tstor Posted December 17, 2017 Author Share Posted December 17, 2017 2 hours ago, itimpi said: Does the HBA configuration screen have an option for enabling/disabling interrupt 13? Normally disabling that one stops the drives being seen as bootable. As I wrote in a previous post, I can configure the HBA in various ways. When the warnings showed up, the HBA itself was configured to be part of the boot order and its BIOS loaded before the BIOS of the SATA controller on the motherboard and ultimately the main BIOS part of the motherboard. All drives however were configured as non-boot devices. This was nice, because I could immediately see, whether all drives were properly recognised. Now I have the whole HBA set for not supporting BIOS booting and the disk discovery sequence in which the error occurred is skipped completely. Alas this means I can no longer see whether all disks are detected at this stage. Quote Link to comment
alhatmy Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 On 12/17/2017 at 6:01 PM, tstor said: In "Adapter Properties" I have now changed "Boot Support" from "Enabled BIOS & OS" to "Enabled OS only". Now the BIOS boot screens of the HBA are skipped except for a short notice that HBA configuration can be invoked using Ctrl-C. I think this supports the guess, that the limit is just related to the number of disks from which could be booted. Does anyone have an idea, where this limit is? I did not find anything documented in the HBA User Guide. (see next posts) Facing same problem!! How can I disable bios boot (skip HBA - Drives) ?? Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 You can just erase the BIOS, it's not needed for Unraid: https://forums.unraid.net/topic/12114-lsi-controller-fw-updates-irit-modes/?do=findComment&comment=632252 Quote Link to comment
alhatmy Posted April 19, 2020 Share Posted April 19, 2020 On 4/7/2020 at 12:37 PM, johnnie.black said: You can just erase the BIOS, it's not needed for Unraid: https://forums.unraid.net/topic/12114-lsi-controller-fw-updates-irit-modes/?do=findComment&comment=632252 Thanks for the solution! 1 more question, in the next post someone mentioned that (If you have more than one controller you have to specify the desired one - same for the erase operation!) How can I mention? as I have 2 currently installed .. Quote Link to comment
JorgeB Posted April 19, 2020 Share Posted April 19, 2020 33 minutes ago, alhatmy said: How can I mention? as I have 2 currently installed .. First check which one is 1 and 2 by listing it: sas2flash –c 1 –list and/or sas2flash –c 2 –list then add -c # to the erase command Quote Link to comment
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