IBM BR101 LSI SAS3082E-R 8 Port Controller strange issues

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NASCake

New Member
Jun 14, 2012
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Howdy all,

I found this forum searching for info on this card and I'm glad I did, great resource. I've heard good things about this card and have access to as as many as I need at a great cost so I really want them to work. Picked one up and started testing on my FreeNAS systems. Drivers preloaded in the OS, check. All drives are showing up, check. Pools created and tested, check. Next a reboot to drop into the bios to poke around. AT this point I'm testing on MIS Mini ITX boards, E350IA-E45 to be exact. These boards boot up fast so the first time around I missed an error which I'm still not sure is being thrown by the mainboard or the controller. The error is:

"ERROR: Could not enable PCI IO attributes"

I hit CTRL-C when prompted for the BIOS UI and I get a message that says it will start once the board initializes. I get a flash of info about connected drives then it looks as the mainboard resets and then FreeNAS starts to boot. It never goes in the card UI. I disable all other boot devices and repeat which then allows me to access the card UI. None of this seems to be effecting the card to work with FreeNAS but an error is an error and having to disable boot devices in order to access the UI just seems wrong. I browsed the card UI for info on interrupt settings or anything else I might be able to modify but it tells me everything is set by the mainboard which is how it should be. Check the mainboard bios looking for settings to muck with for the PCI bus, nothing really there. The 16X PCIE slot on the board actually runs at 4X speed which shouldn't matter because the card is 4X and i've run 8X cards in the slot with no issue either.

The card came with firmware version 6.26.00.00 . I've made no attempt to upgrade the bios yet because I'm just not clear with the large amount of info about how newer bios's like the IT bios and what it will do with my application, FreeNAS. Using mainly ZFS I need the drive to support JBOD operation. I know that firmware updates can make all the difference with issues but I wanted to bounce it off you guys and hopefully Patrick who seems to have a large amount of experiences with this card.

Thanks in advance,

~NC
 

NASCake

New Member
Jun 14, 2012
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Update:

I've installed the card in a new mainboard setup, Jetway NF9A running a core I3 CPU. I'm seeing the same PCI IO error and the IU will not launch.

~NC
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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Have not seen that error before. Have you tried it in a server board?

IT mode is generally a good way to go for ZFS applications.
 

NASCake

New Member
Jun 14, 2012
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I have one server system that is my current SBS2003 dev box, I'll give it a try.

Also, I've been reading up on the firmware updates and was going to give it a try. I found this post with firmware batches.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/in...c35e3b7fbed0b&topic=12767.msg121129#msg121129

It mentioned changing the batch to match the bios version ,b1,b2 & b3. looking through the batch files I didn't see hoe to specify this and I'm not sure how to decipher this from board info. Also when running the "listall" command from two W7U 64 systems the utility does not find the card but the OS does see. I just started to look for updated drivers. I saw your post on updating the firmware using the -o switch for intel boards, does this apply to the BR10i as well?

Thanks!

~NC
 

NASCake

New Member
Jun 14, 2012
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OK i see where the b1,b2 and b3 firware files are and how to apply them. It never gets that far because the util can't find the card.

~NC
 

NASCake

New Member
Jun 14, 2012
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OK I installed the controller in a dual xeon intel server box I have running 2003. No sign of the error and the UI came up right after initialization. Install 2003 drivers and then updated the firmware to the IT version, worked first try. Installed the updated card in my Core i3 box and even though it is showing the new firmware version I still get the error and the Bios UI problem. FreeNAS still sees all the drives it seems there is no issue on that end.

Is there an IRQ handler on the Intel server board that is having better luck with the board? I'm waiting to hear from my supplier who's testing some boards he has.

Thanks

~NC
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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Sometimes consumer motherboards have issues with RAID cards. :-/ Seems like that may be the issue if it is working in the dual Xeon box.

Did you try a clear CMOS though?
 

NASCake

New Member
Jun 14, 2012
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Well we can add MSI and Jetway boards to that list.

I'm still going to perform load test to see how they perform.

Thanks for all the info!

~NC