A1SAI-C2750 - SATA drives not present on boot after I plug in Intel X520-DA2

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kroem

kroem

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Aug 16, 2014
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I have a strange issue where my server will boot directly into UEFI when I plug in a 10G NIC (X520). The boot drive (SATA0) is just not present in BIOS or anything. If I live boot into like gparted it's there (I'm guessing because it does a full scan of attached devices, maybe?)

If I unplug the card it the drive(s) show up fine. Plug something else in the slot, RAID card, 4x 1G NIC, the drives show up fine... ?

My first thought was that it didn't have enough power or so, but now I've change PSU to a 850W one which should be well within specs.

Any ideas?
 
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ttabbal

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Mar 10, 2016
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Check the NIC boot ROM configuration. It might be set up to attempt an iSCSI or other network boot. That might throw off drive detection in BIOS. There's probably a message to press a key combo to configure it in POST.

Is there another slot you can try?
 
kroem

kroem

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j_h_o said:
Latest BIOS flashed on the board?
Click to expand...
Hmm, there might be a BIOS 1.1A, I have 1.1... might try that?

ttabbal said:
Check the NIC boot ROM configuration. It might be set up to attempt an iSCSI or other network boot. That might throw off drive detection in BIOS. There's probably a message to press a key combo to configure it in POST.

Is there another slot you can try?
Click to expand...
Sadly there is only one PCIe slot on this board Supermicro | Products | Motherboards | Atom Boards | A1SAi-2750F

I'll throw in the card again and see if there is anything in the config!
 
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fractal

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Jun 7, 2016
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Did adding the card push your hard drive off the "boot order" list? Network cards seem to insert themselves into the boor order near the top when you add them and some bios have very few slots for boot devices. Motherboard network boot plus 10GBE network boot plus usb plus uefi is four which fills some of the motherboards I have. Do you see your hard drive in the boot order list on your bios after adding the card? If not, can you replace something in the list with it?
 
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pricklypunter

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I'm thinking perhaps bus steering/ bus masterering issues or interrupt conflict preventing the hard disk controller enumerating. Another slot for the card would be my first choice, but as you don't have that option available, I would be turning off everything in the bios that needs resources assigned by the PnP system and adding them back, beginning with the card, until I hit a conflict again, adding them in a different order and test again etc until I manhandled the PnP system into assigning resources in an order that works :)

Or as Fractal mentioned, perhaps the bootable device list is full and your drive is last in line...
 
kroem

kroem

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fractal said:
Did adding the card push your hard drive off the "boot order" list? Network cards seem to insert themselves into the boor order near the top when you add them and some bios have very few slots for boot devices. Motherboard network boot plus 10GBE network boot plus usb plus uefi is four which fills some of the motherboards I have. Do you see your hard drive in the boot order list on your bios after adding the card? If not, can you replace something in the list with it?
Click to expand...
No, that's the thing, they are not even present in the list, or as an option. I've ran into issue with boot order, that's simple :)


pricklypunter said:
I'm thinking perhaps bus steering/ bus masterering issues or interrupt conflict preventing the hard disk controller enumerating. Another slot for the card would be my first choice, but as you don't have that option available, I would be turning off everything in the bios that needs resources assigned by the PnP system and adding them back, beginning with the card, until I hit a conflict again, adding them in a different order and test again etc until I manhandled the PnP system into assigning resources in an order that works :)

Or as Fractal mentioned, perhaps the bootable device list is full and your drive is last in line...
Click to expand...
Well... I tried the first option mentioned in thread - upgrading the BIOS. now keyboard doesn't work via IPMI! So I cant even boot into BIOS remotely, great.

I upgraded IPMI firmware, no difference. What..:!? Supermicro, why u dont like me?
 
kroem

kroem

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Haha...ok...so keyboard in IPMI works without the card inserted. I've inserted the card in a generic server (J1900) and it works...
 
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pricklypunter

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Back to PCI steering/ bus mastering/ interrupt issues I think. Go through the bios and turn off absolutely everything you can and try again, if the card shows up, start adding things back until it hits a brick wall, try again adding things, but in a different order etc until you find one that works. If the PnP system is working as it should, it might jiggle things about enough for you to get it installed :)

Have you tried downgrading the bios/ ipmi to an earlier version just in case the latest and greatest is broken in some regard? Just a thought...
 
kroem

kroem

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pricklypunter said:
Back to PCI steering/ bus mastering/ interrupt issues I think. Go through the bios and turn off absolutely everything you can and try again, if the card shows up, start adding things back until it hits a brick wall, try again adding things, but in a different order etc until you find one that works. If the PnP system is working as it should, it might jiggle things about enough for you to get it installed :)

Have you tried downgrading the bios/ ipmi to an earlier version just in case the latest and greatest is broken in some regard? Just a thought...
Click to expand...
Pretty sure I did that, turning everything off, but I'll try again. The problem is not the card - that shows up - it's the SATA ports that are not recognized on boot :(

Actaully, looks like the BIOS I have now (1.1a) is older than the one I had before (1.1). Only by 4 days, but still...

Either way, none of them work!
 
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Franko

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Oct 21, 2014
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I have the same setup as you and it worked flawlessly (currently using it as an esxi 6 server). Could the x520 be the issue? Let me know if you need me to provide you with my config info.
 
kroem

kroem

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Franko said:
I have the same setup as you and it worked flawlessly (currently using it as an esxi 6 server). Could the x520 be the issue? Let me know if you need me to provide you with my config info.
Click to expand...
Ah, great! That's good to know - I'll try and upgrade the firmware on the card first.

What BIOS / IPMI fw are you running?
 
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Franko

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The info for the MB is as follows:

FW: 01.24
Build Time: 2013-11-29
Bios Version: 1.1a
Bios Build Time: 8/27/2015

Let me know if you need me to get bios info on the x520 card. I am also running the DA1 version of the x520 but I'd be really surprised if that was the source of the errors. Let me know if you need me to get the firmware info for the x520.
 
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kroem

kroem

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Hmm, next problem? Can't flash. I never did it with Intel NIC's...

root@debian-Q1900:~# /mnt/pve/napp-it_vm/Preboot.tar/APPS/BootUtil/Linux_x64/bootutil64e -ALL -flashenable

Intel(R) Ethernet Flash Firmware Utility
BootUtil version 1.6.13.0
Copyright (C) 2003-2016 Intel Corporation

Enabling boot ROM on port 1...
ERROR: Unsupported feature

Enabling boot ROM on port 2...
ERROR: Unsupported feature

Port Network Address Location Series WOL Flash Firmware Version
==== =============== ======== ======= === ============================= =======
1 FFFFFFFFFFFF 2:00.0 10GbE N/A FLASH Not Present
2 FFFFFFFFFFFF 2:00.1 10GbE N/A FLASH Not Present
 
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Drewy

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Apr 23, 2016
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Try enabling smb to pci-e. I too have the same board and the same nic. Mine works fine but I had exactly the same issue with another x9 e3 Xeon board and the smb - pcie enablement fixed that one.
 
kroem

kroem

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Aug 16, 2014
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Drewy said:
Try enabling smb to pci-e. I too have the same board and the same nic. Mine works fine but I had exactly the same issue with another x9 e3 Xeon board and the smb - pcie enablement fixed that one.
Click to expand...
Tried that... no dice... ´This is starting to piss me off... haha.
 
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