ASRock ROMED8-2T SATA Connection Problem

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scolby33

New Member
Aug 26, 2020
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Hello,

A few months ago I posted about my EPYC build using the ROMED8-2T. At the time, I hadn't yet obtained the hard drives for the server, but now I have and I'm running in to two issues.

The motherboard box includes a miniSASHD to 4x SATA cable and an OCuLink to 4x SATA cable. I've attached 4 of my hard drives via the miniSASHD cable and I can see them under storage in the system setup menu. However, they do not appear in my operating system (Debian 10, all up to date). Is there a driver needed for these to be recognized under Linux? I noticed there was a comment on the STH review of the motherboard asking a similar question--apparently Windows would see the drives, but not Debian.

Second, the two drives attached by the OCuLink port do not appear in system setup or to Debian. I don't see many references online to using OCuLink for SATA, so maybe this isn't supported. I'd be very confused that the motherboard had an OCuLink to SATA cable in the box if this were the case, though.

I've confirmed that the jumpers on the motherboard are set properly to have the ports I'm using enabled, and I've also spent time re-seating and swapping around connectors, with no changes observed.

Does anyone have experience with this motherboard and connecting drives this way under Linux?
 

Magic8Ball

Member
Nov 27, 2019
53
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Whilst researching this board I've seen this mentioned before (eg here), but don't recall reading about a definitive solution, although to be fair I've not put too much time into this. Perhaps use your Google Fu to trawl the usual forums to see if you can unearth some clues or suggestions?
 

EffrafaxOfWug

Radioactive Member
Feb 12, 2015
1,394
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Does the ROMED8-2T even support SATA drives on the oculink slots...? I know it came with an adapter, but the board specs and manual make no mention of being able to do SATA - only PCIe/U2 drives. Is it possible it's an oculink to U2 adapter rather than SATA?
 
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scolby33

New Member
Aug 26, 2020
13
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So, I have learned a lot in the last three days. I reached out to ASRock support and did confirm that the OCuLink ports on this motherboard only work with U.2 drives, not SATA. I didn't realize that the physical layer of the connector was identical (although that's the first sentence that Wikipedia has to say about the connector sigh.) I found a different ASRock motherboard that explicitly supports SATA via OCuLink and it is clear that the line stating this is missing from the ROMED8-2T's manual.

Further, I made an incredibly dumb troubleshooting mistake and didn't try swapping from one miniSASHD port to the other. When plugged in to SATA0_3, the drives show up in the BIOS but not in Debian. When attached to SATA4_7, they show up in both places and appear to work perfectly.

Somewhere else it was mentioned that drives started working when a device was attached to PCIe1, so I thought there might be some ordering constraint going on, where somehow the operating system won't look at SATA0_3 if SATA4_7 are not populated. I obtained a second miniSASHD-to-4x SATA cable this evening and just tried it out. Both cables work when attached to SATA4_7, and still neither cable works when attached to SATA0_3. With both attached, all the drives show up in the BIOS but only the four attached to SATA4_7 show up to Debian. Swapping the two cables gets me the other drives in Debian, so I think I have ruled out cable and drive issues.

This leaves a couple possibilities:
  • Debian doesn't support SATA0_3 for some reason
    • I tried upgrading to kernel 5.8.0 from buster-backports, but this didn't change anything
  • My motherboard's SATA0_3 port is subtly broken in such a way that the firmware can enumerate the drives but Debian can't
    • I will try to dig out a Windows install medium and see if that OS can see drives from both ports. That would help me to refute this hypothesis.
Of these, the former seems to be more likely to me, but perhaps I'm wrong.

There is various information in the dmesg boot logs and lspci output, but I'm not sure what would be helpful to debug this. At this point, I'm planning to follow up with ASRock support (which has been incredibly responsive so far--I have no complaints about their US support) and if they don't have any ideas, look for some more Debian or Linux expertise.
 
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scolby33

New Member
Aug 26, 2020
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I have good news! TL;DR: enabling SR-IOV in the firmware caused the drives to appear.

ASRock Support wasn't able to give me any other new ideas. I tested with a Windows 10 installer USB and all 10 (8x SATA and 2x NVMe) drives appeared, with not fussing with drivers, so this ruled out a broken motherboard.

I reached out to the debian-user mailing list (Missing SATA Drives on ROMED8-2T Motherboard), and got a couple responses, which eventually led me to looking more closely at my dmesg boot logs. I found an error assigning BAR memory to the PCIe device that I hypothesized corresponded to SATA0_3. (My correspondent on the debian-user list noted that one PCIe bus address was listed as a SATA controller but not shown by the ahci driver in the startup logs.)

The ROMED8-2T firmware only has two advanced PCIe configuration options, and one of them is SR-IOV support. Figuring it was worth a shot, I toggled it and voila: drives.

I'm not sure exactly the relationship between SR-IOV and the drives being detected properly: if anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them. Otherwise, though, I'm glad I got this figured out before Thanksgiving. Now, it's time to learn ZFS!

For future search engine travelers, I also saw a log line at one point involving the words "ahci", "probe", "failed", and "error -22". There weren't good results for that on the web that I saw, but maybe this post will help you.
 

EffrafaxOfWug

Radioactive Member
Feb 12, 2015
1,394
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That was a good read, thanks, glad you got it sorted.

At a guess, the BAR errors went away once SR-IOV was enabled? If so, it seems that enabling it might affect the size of the BAR aperture. Curious as to how it didn't seem to affect windows, but possible that handles the memory mapping differently compared to linux thus avoiding the error.

(Making your thread XKCD 979-compliant means you win 48 internet points and a sherry trifle)
 

BobTB

Member
Jul 19, 2019
81
19
8
I also have this MB, and my SATA drives work when connected to OCuLink connector with the cable included in the MB box (in ESXI)

I updated the BIOS before trying anything to v1.3
 
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kaz

New Member
Nov 21, 2020
14
6
3
San Jose, CA, USA
I have good news! TL;DR: enabling SR-IOV in the firmware caused the drives to appear.
I built my first EPYC workstation last week as described at https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/amd-epyc-7551-295-gbp.30786/page-4#post-288606
but I had experienced the same SATA drive recognition issue, in my case Ubuntu Server 20.04 which is a kind of Debian.
Reading this thread, I enabled SR-IOV (Single Root IO Virtualization) at Chipset Configuration of UEFI, the problem was solved immediately.

scolby33, thanks for sharing your experience and very useful information.
 
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Nov 19, 2020
38
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I have good news! TL;DR: enabling SR-IOV in the firmware caused the drives to appear.

ASRock Support wasn't able to give me any other new ideas. I tested with a Windows 10 installer USB and all 10 (8x SATA and 2x NVMe) drives appeared, with not fussing with drivers, so this ruled out a broken motherboard.

I reached out to the debian-user mailing list (Missing SATA Drives on ROMED8-2T Motherboard), and got a couple responses, which eventually led me to looking more closely at my dmesg boot logs. I found an error assigning BAR memory to the PCIe device that I hypothesized corresponded to SATA0_3. (My correspondent on the debian-user list noted that one PCIe bus address was listed as a SATA controller but not shown by the ahci driver in the startup logs.)

The ROMED8-2T firmware only has two advanced PCIe configuration options, and one of them is SR-IOV support. Figuring it was worth a shot, I toggled it and voila: drives.

I'm not sure exactly the relationship between SR-IOV and the drives being detected properly: if anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them. Otherwise, though, I'm glad I got this figured out before Thanksgiving. Now, it's time to learn ZFS!

For future search engine travelers, I also saw a log line at one point involving the words "ahci", "probe", "failed", and "error -22". There weren't good results for that on the web that I saw, but maybe this post will help you.
Thanks for posting this - I had the same problem, so it was great to find this solution (even though it's unclear why it works). Incidentally, I also found these settings buried deep in BIOS 1.30:

'Advanced' > 'AMD CBS' > 'FCH Common Options' > 'SATA Configuration Options' > 'SATA Controller options' > 'SATA Controller Enable' ... set Sata0 -> Sata3 to 'Enabled'

I tried setting them all to 'Enabled', but it didn't solve the problem (the HDDs were still recognised by the BIOS, but not Ubuntu 20.04).
 

zanechua

Member
May 6, 2016
78
12
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I also have this MB, and my SATA drives work when connected to OCuLink connector with the cable included in the MB box (in ESXI)

I updated the BIOS before trying anything to v1.3
What was your configuration that made it work?

Please share the:
1. Jumper Configuration
2. Bios Version
3. Bios Configs (if any)

I've tried possibly every combination of jumper and it does not work. Everything seems to conform to the rest of the posters in the thread about SATA being on the MiniSAS HD connectors only.
 

randomuser

New Member
Jan 4, 2021
7
2
3
I am sure you can use the OCuLink for sata some how, but they are meant for U.2 drives :)
(Note: i have the same board also)
But yeah please
Please share the:
1. Jumper Configuration
Jumpers.PNG
Also your BOIS setting if you can :)
 
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zanechua

Member
May 6, 2016
78
12
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I am sure you can use the OCuLink for sata some how, but they are meant for U.2 drives :)
(Note: i have the same board also)
But yeah please

View attachment 17508
Also your BOIS setting if you can :)
I've seen that. Was specifically asking for that users configuration since he claimed that he was able to get it working.

I've switched jumper configuration and tested in every configuration and nothing worked to get the drives detected in both UEFI and ESXi.

I have an X570D4I-2T that does SATA over OcuLink and that has a configuration in UEFI to switch the OcuLink mode from PCIe to SATA
 
Last edited:

jpmomo

Active Member
Aug 12, 2018
531
192
43
So, I have learned a lot in the last three days. I reached out to ASRock support and did confirm that the OCuLink ports on this motherboard only work with U.2 drives, not SATA. I didn't realize that the physical layer of the connector was identical (although that's the first sentence that Wikipedia has to say about the connector sigh.) I found a different ASRock motherboard that explicitly supports SATA via OCuLink and it is clear that the line stating this is missing from the ROMED8-2T's manual.

Further, I made an incredibly dumb troubleshooting mistake and didn't try swapping from one miniSASHD port to the other. When plugged in to SATA0_3, the drives show up in the BIOS but not in Debian. When attached to SATA4_7, they show up in both places and appear to work perfectly.

Somewhere else it was mentioned that drives started working when a device was attached to PCIe1, so I thought there might be some ordering constraint going on, where somehow the operating system won't look at SATA0_3 if SATA4_7 are not populated. I obtained a second miniSASHD-to-4x SATA cable this evening and just tried it out. Both cables work when attached to SATA4_7, and still neither cable works when attached to SATA0_3. With both attached, all the drives show up in the BIOS but only the four attached to SATA4_7 show up to Debian. Swapping the two cables gets me the other drives in Debian, so I think I have ruled out cable and drive issues.

This leaves a couple possibilities:
  • Debian doesn't support SATA0_3 for some reason
    • I tried upgrading to kernel 5.8.0 from buster-backports, but this didn't change anything
  • My motherboard's SATA0_3 port is subtly broken in such a way that the firmware can enumerate the drives but Debian can't
    • I will try to dig out a Windows install medium and see if that OS can see drives from both ports. That would help me to refute this hypothesis.
Of these, the former seems to be more likely to me, but perhaps I'm wrong.

There is various information in the dmesg boot logs and lspci output, but I'm not sure what would be helpful to debug this. At this point, I'm planning to follow up with ASRock support (which has been incredibly responsive so far--I have no complaints about their US support) and if they don't have any ideas, look for some more Debian or Linux expertise.
do you know how the cable with the oculink connector on one end is supposed to connect to a u.2 nvme drive? It seems like it is missing the sff-8639 connector to connect to the u.2 nvme ssd drives. I am trying to connect a u.3 nvme ssd to that motherboard and am wondering which cable I need. thanks for any help.
 

zanechua

Member
May 6, 2016
78
12
8
30
do you know how the cable with the oculink connector on one end is supposed to connect to a u.2 nvme drive? It seems like it is missing the sff-8639 connector to connect to the u.2 nvme ssd drives. I am trying to connect a u.3 nvme ssd to that motherboard and am wondering which cable I need. thanks for any help.
That's the extremely weird thing about the cables that came with the board...

It comes with OcuLink to 4 x SATA breakout but are apparently supposed to be used with U.2 drives?

It also comes with Mini SAS HD to 4 x U.2 connector breakout.

Not sure why that was the case when SATA doesn't work on the OcuLink ports.
 

jpmomo

Active Member
Aug 12, 2018
531
192
43
I recently purchased an oculink to u.2 cable and am trying to get it to work in the mb in this thread. Since the 2 cables that came with the mb don't seem to work with a u.2 nvme ssd, I purchased a cable that I thought might. The issue is that the cable has an extra 15 pin sata power connector and I am not sure where to connect that part to. The oculink (8611) connects to the mb and the u.2 (8639) connnects to the nvme ssd but where do I connect the "power" connector to?
 

zanechua

Member
May 6, 2016
78
12
8
30
I recently purchased an oculink to u.2 cable and am trying to get it to work in the mb in this thread. Since the 2 cables that came with the mb don't seem to work with a u.2 nvme ssd, I purchased a cable that I thought might. The issue is that the cable has an extra 15 pin sata power connector and I am not sure where to connect that part to. The oculink (8611) connects to the mb and the u.2 (8639) connnects to the nvme ssd but where do I connect the "power" connector to?
You connect the sata power from your PSU to it.
 

Mithor

New Member
Mar 17, 2022
3
0
1
A few months ago I purchased a ROME8D-2T motherboard. Finally last week I got my EPYC 7313P so now I was able to build the server.
To make the motherboard compatible with the CPU I upgraded the following firmware: BIOS v3.20 and BMC v1.19.
In the package came a Mini SAS HD(SFF-8643) to 4x SAS(SFF-8482) cable:
14G504002000AK.jpg
Being a newbie to the SAS interface I assumed this meant I could attach four drives with SAS interfaces to this motherboard.
Based on this assumption I have purchased two new HDDs with SAS interface.
But when using this cable the motherboard does not detect the drives.
On the motherboard there are two Mini SAS HD female connectors, marked 'SATA_0_3' and 'SATA_4_7'. Does this mean they only support SATA and not SAS?
I have tried using either of the two Mini SAS HD female connectors. But no drives were detected.
I have tried different settings on the PCIE2 Selection Jumpers (for enabling/disabling different I/O interfaces).
In the BIOS Setup i have enabled SR-IOV Support (as mentioned above).
Still, in the section Storage Configuration of the BIOS Setup all ports show 'No detected'.

I assume the SAS connectors on this cable should be fed with SATA power through the rear end of the connector, correct?
I have confirmed that the SATA power cable I am using feeds power by attaching an SSD to the end of the cable.

Any help/suggestions would be much appreciated.
 

RolloZ170

Well-Known Member
Apr 24, 2016
5,159
1,549
113
On the motherboard there are two Mini SAS HD female connectors, marked 'SATA_0_3' and 'SATA_4_7'. Does this mean they only support SATA and not SAS?
YES.
1.1 Package Contents
• ASRock Rack ROMED8-2T / ROMED8-NL Motherboard (ATX Form Factor: 12.0-in x 9.6-in, 30.5 cm x 24.4 cm)
• Quick Installation Guide
• 1 x I/O Shield
• 2 x Mini SAS HD to 4*SATA Cables (60cm)

Storage
SATA Controller 8 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s (from 2x mini SAS HD)
 
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scolby33

New Member
Aug 26, 2020
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That's the extremely weird thing about the cables that came with the board...

It comes with OcuLink to 4 x SATA breakout but are apparently supposed to be used with U.2 drives?

It also comes with Mini SAS HD to 4 x U.2 connector breakout.

Not sure why that was the case when SATA doesn't work on the OcuLink ports.
This also messed with me. ASRock support explicitly said that SATA is not supported via OCuLink on the ROMED8-2T (https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...-2t-sata-connection-problem.30838/post-285625), so I have no idea why the included that cable in the box o_O