rxnelson Posted October 7, 2010 Share Posted October 7, 2010 So I came back to the forums after a long while to check on whether the supermicro card was still the one to get only to find that GB motherboards have this HPA issue. (Yes it's been a while.) So I did the syslog and sure enough it says HPA detected. I saw the hdparm fix (which doesn't seem to always work) and the HDAT2 tool. Are these still the best methods? I think I have the F1 bios which is a revision 1.1 I am not sure if you can disable it with an upgrade or not. Someone made reference to a FC bios but it looks like that was revision 2.0 I was tempted to try hdparm but it looks like my numbers are way off (native very large) in comparison to what everyone else is posting so I decided to just ask. I haven't really experienced any problems yet AFAIK. I haven't noticed data loss or lock-ups etc. Also I am thinking of getting this board if I can't disable HPA--Asus M4A785-M. I want to retain 6 SATA, 1 PATA, and expansion for supermicro card while reusing AMD and DDR2...any better alternatives? Oct 6 19:26:20 Tower kernel: ata2.00: HPA detected: current 3907029168, native 18446744073321613488 syslog.txt Quote Link to comment
Joe L. Posted October 7, 2010 Share Posted October 7, 2010 See this thread: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4638.msg42266#msg42266 I don't think you have an HPA. Its current size ends in 168. The "native" value is one seen frequently as a value read incorrectly by the BIOS/OS. (It is far to huge to be a true size) The "warning" in the syslog is as a result of the two sizes differing. Joe L. Quote Link to comment
rxnelson Posted October 7, 2010 Author Share Posted October 7, 2010 So I saw in your link there is a kernel bug that misreports the native. I am still on 4.3.3 so I think the kernel issue still applies. I didn't see anything in the bios to turn HPA off. I wonder if what another poster suggested is true and it is actually introduced with a bios update. According to that thread I should verify they all end in 168? After that keep hoping I am lucky or switch boards. Quote Link to comment
Joe L. Posted October 7, 2010 Share Posted October 7, 2010 I am still on 4.3.3 so I think the kernel issue still applies. You realize that is 26 releases ago? (Actually 28 releases if you count the two 5.0beta versions.) Is there a specific reason you've not elected to update the unRAID OS? Joe L. Quote Link to comment
rxnelson Posted October 7, 2010 Author Share Posted October 7, 2010 Everything was working as far as I knew. No time. Too much data to worry about backing up if something screwed up. Not sure any enhancements would help me. Choose any two Also when I did look at updating it always appeared there was a fix to a fix to a fix. It didn't inspire confidence. Not trying to be critical...just how it seemed. Quote Link to comment
Joe L. Posted October 7, 2010 Share Posted October 7, 2010 Everything was working as far as I knew. No time. Too much data to worry about backing up if something screwed up. Not sure any enhancements would help me. Choose any two Also when I did look at updating it always appeared there was a fix to a fix to a fix. It didn't inspire confidence. Not trying to be critical...just how it seemed. No problem... Yes, newer releases sometimes have newer bugs... There was a huge performance increase when the newer kernel was used in 4.5.3... That version had its own timing issue in not waiting enough time for disks to come on-line when first powering up. Version 4.5.6 is stable and no glaring bugs. As you said, no need to upgrade if it all worked for you. (I understand completely) Quote Link to comment
rxnelson Posted October 8, 2010 Author Share Posted October 8, 2010 Thanks. Maybe I will take a look at this over the weekend. Does the fix to 4.5.6 include the huge performance increase from 4.5.3 or was that something that had to be slowed down because of the not waiting issue? Also, if you are correct none of the drives are yet "infected". I see no way in the bios to turn it "off". Have I just been lucky up to this point or something else? I emailed GB to see if they know if it was implemented with my board revision. It would seem I got the first revision first bios. I'll see what that say. It's a little unnerving to think I may be sitting on a 10TB time bomb. Quote Link to comment
Joe L. Posted October 8, 2010 Share Posted October 8, 2010 Thanks. Maybe I will take a look at this over the weekend. Does the fix to 4.5.6 include the huge performance increase from 4.5.3 or was that something that had to be slowed down because of the not waiting issue?The 4.5.6 release has the same performance increase. Also, if you are correct none of the drives are yet "infected". I see no way in the bios to turn it "off". Have I just been lucky up to this point or something else? I emailed GB to see if they know if it was implemented with my board revision. It would seem I got the first revision first bios. I'll see what that say. It's a little unnerving to think I may be sitting on a 10TB time bomb. If your BIOS manual does not mention a the ability to copy the BIOS to disk for quick recovery, then you might have a BIOS version before they added it. Joe L. Quote Link to comment
rxnelson Posted October 10, 2010 Author Share Posted October 10, 2010 Well here is their reply. Dear customer, No matter what revision board, virtual bios is on by defaults. Quote Link to comment
Joe L. Posted October 10, 2010 Share Posted October 10, 2010 Well here is their reply. Dear customer, No matter what revision board, virtual bios is on by defaults. Scary... Possibly Wrong (unless they are referring to your specific MB model), but scary. Quote Link to comment
rxnelson Posted October 12, 2010 Author Share Posted October 12, 2010 Didn't get a chance to do it this weekend. Looks like it is pretty simple if I am reading correctly. If you are currently running unRAID Server 4.2-beta1 or higher (including 4.2.x 'final'), please copy the following files from the new release to the root of your Flash device: bzimage bzroot reboot That's it? Quote Link to comment
Joe L. Posted October 12, 2010 Share Posted October 12, 2010 Didn't get a chance to do it this weekend. Looks like it is pretty simple if I am reading correctly. If you are currently running unRAID Server 4.2-beta1 or higher (including 4.2.x 'final'), please copy the following files from the new release to the root of your Flash device: bzimage bzroot reboot That's it? Yup... that's it. You could first rename the existing bzimage to bzimage.421 and existing bzroot to bzroot.421, just in case you wish to revert. It would then just be a rename to their original names and reboot. Joe L. Quote Link to comment
rxnelson Posted October 16, 2010 Author Share Posted October 16, 2010 I went ahead and picked up a combo deal on an ASUS board and sempron. Any tips on switching out mobo? Quick research just says to print my configuration and hook it back up then make sure everything looks good, maybe reassign the drives? Anything else? Quote Link to comment
mbryanr Posted October 18, 2010 Share Posted October 18, 2010 Take a screen shot of your "devices" page on your existing motherboard, then, after changing use the "devices" page to put the drives back in their respective slots in the array, then just press "Start" It should be very simple... Joe L. Quote Link to comment
rxnelson Posted October 18, 2010 Author Share Posted October 18, 2010 Yea it all went pretty smooth. It took a little longer than I expected when I unassigned the parity but that was the only issue. Parity check afterwards had no errors. I guess I will check out the syslog in my spare time. Thanks. Quote Link to comment
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