Areca 1320-8i with Chenbro CK23601 SAS Expander

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nry

Active Member
Feb 22, 2013
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I'm currently in the process of investigating ZFS over hardware RAID via my Areca 1882 card. My current motherboard has a limited number of PCIe slots so I'll need to use my existing Chenbro 36 port expander for the 22 hard drives in my chassis.

System spec (stripped down slightly for testing):
  • Supermicro X9SCM-F
  • Xeon E3-1245
  • 2x8GB Kingston DDR3
  • OCZ Agility 3 60GB boot drive connected via onboard SATA
  • Areca 1320-8i
  • Chenbro CK23601 expander
  • 12x Hitachi 7K3000 3TB
OS: Ubuntu server x64 14.04 LTS

Initial boot up looked very promising with the Areca detecting all 12 of the test hard drives via the expander. Then it came to booting Ubuntu and I'm getting a bunch of errors which I can't really make much sense of, these errors only occur when I have drives connected via the expander so I'm assuming there might be some sort of config/compatibility issue.

These errors occur in normal boot of Ubuntu, safe mode and attempting doing a clean install.

Image 1: http://i.imgur.com/1Lk7Lbb.png
Image 2: http://i.imgur.com/doPERQq.jpg
Image 3: http://i.imgur.com/NTr7TvD.jpg
Image 4: http://i.imgur.com/hz0zIFk.jpg
Image 5: http://i.imgur.com/m6U2b5V.png
Image 6: http://i.imgur.com/weNzw3W.jpg
Image 7: http://i.imgur.com/ksBFeep.png

Anyone got any tips? Might have to see if I still have my IBM M1015 card as theres forum posts of that working with this expander.

Oh and any tips on how I can extract this boot message as plain text instead of taking photos would be great! :rolleyes:
 
C

canta

Well-Known Member
Nov 26, 2014
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your screenshot is not clear enough.
please upload to pastebin.com

you can use winscp to copy the file to your local drive.
usually on windows, I am using winscp or putty(for remote terminal access)
or between unix/linux machnie: scp and ssh

the file should be /var/log/messages or similar..

based on your picture, you areca kernel module mv_sas (marvel... sas chipset) got panic!! and spitout tracing and died.

M1015(megaraid module if running 9240 firmware or mpt2sas if runnin 9211 firmware) should works on CK23601 ( 6G LSI expander)
 
Entz

Entz

Active Member
Apr 25, 2013
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Canada Eh?
I would let it boot without the expander and update the OS/kernel. Perhaps it is a bad driver or some other incompatibility.
 
N

nry

Active Member
Feb 22, 2013
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canta
Always thought /var/log/messages was cleared on boot, will take a look cheers.

Entz
Good idea, I'll give it a go. Just spent the best part of 4 hours trying to flash my M1015 to IT mode, so far it has been fail after fail now it's currently sitting on 'Resetting adapter' and has been for the last 10 minutes!
 
N

nry

Active Member
Feb 22, 2013
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Updated the driver to: Areca Technology Corporation for Ubuntu 14.04.01 x64

Areca 1310 connected to expander, no drives, 1 Hitachi drive connected direct to Areca, boots fine

[ 0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset [ 0.000000] Initializing cg - Pastebin.com

Areca 1310 connected to expander, 4 drives, fails to boot with what looks like the same errors as above.

Haven't tried a different port on the expander as theres only 1 input (excluding the 8088 port on the back, but I have no leads for that).

Tried a different output on the expander, same result.

If I could get the M1015 flashed to IT mode I'd happily use that, tried 4 different motherboards both in DOS and UEFI modes with zero success! :(
 
C

canta

Well-Known Member
Nov 26, 2014
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nry said:
Updated the driver to: Areca Technology Corporation for Ubuntu 14.04.01 x64

Areca 1310 connected to expander, no drives, 1 Hitachi drive connected direct to Areca, boots fine

[ 0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset [ 0.000000] Initializing cg - Pastebin.com

Areca 1310 connected to expander, 4 drives, fails to boot with what looks like the same errors as above.

Haven't tried a different port on the expander as theres only 1 input (excluding the 8088 port on the back, but I have no leads for that).

Tried a different output on the expander, same result.

If I could get the M1015 flashed to IT mode I'd happily use that, tried 4 different motherboards both in DOS and UEFI modes with zero success! :(
Click to expand...
if you running M1015 for ZoL, leave alone the firmware, since all drives will treated as jbod (unconfigure good).
megasas kernel module is very solid on linux.

I have M1015 and never update to 9211 IT, has been running since last year and replaced 3 bad drives :p....
btw, I attached to 6g lsi SM backplane
 
Entz

Entz

Active Member
Apr 25, 2013
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Canada Eh?
canta said:
not likely, mv_sas has been ages.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't say that. In that thread I linked a patch was made to mv_sas to fix a condition where a Marvel controller attached to an expander caused the same access violation in the same spot. That was on April 16th, less then a month ago ;)


Speaking of which someone mentioned having issues with a ARC-1320 and they required going to an earlier kernel and using the Areca drivers. That might be a possibility if you cant get the M1015 to work.
 
C

canta

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Nov 26, 2014
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Entz said:
I wouldn't say that. In that thread I linked a patch was made to mv_sas to fix a condition where a Marvel controller attached to an expander caused the same access violation in the same spot. That was on April 16th, less then a month ago ;)


Speaking of which someone mentioned having issues with a ARC-1320 and they required going to an earlier kernel and using the Areca drivers. That might be a possibility if you cant get the M1015 to work.
Click to expand...
good point, the discussion is circulating on this month.
honestly mvsas is aging as today.

do not go back to earlier kernel when usong ZoL 0.6.3/4 :p...
 
N

nry

Active Member
Feb 22, 2013
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Thanks for all the help guys, finally got the M1015 working and I'll just use that!
 
C

canta

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Nov 26, 2014
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nry said:
Thanks for all the help guys, finally got the M1015 working and I'll just use that!
Click to expand...
at last, happy ending story!.

just my opinion: avoid MV sas card as possible :D. many horror nightmares :D. I had been burn 2 times since mv is not updating their GPL source code. lsi and adaptec are pretty solid on updating/patching especially on newer kernel level.
 
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