Re: LSI MegaRAID installation

[steve%prd.co.uk@localhost (Steve Blinkhorn)]

I am beginning to think I have been misled by the (really not at all
clear) Fujitsu documentation, and by firmware and software menus
which are utilised across a range of products.   I suspect there is no
hardware RAID controller at all on these boxes, but a software RAID.
They are out-of-the-box RX1330 M3s.   The term "embedded RAID" is very
unclear.   Can anyone say definitively what's going on, and whether I
should take notice of it at all or just implement a RAIDframe
configuration?   If the latter, what's the best quick-start guide,
given that I already have a non-RAID NetBBSD8.0 RC1 installation I would want
to use on a front-panel swappable drive already.   I have seen a route
map for this situation, but if anyone could point me to it...

--
Steve Blinkhorn <steve%prd.co.uk@localhost>

You wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Apr 30, 2018 at 04:49:32PM +0000, Steve Blinkhorn wrote:
> > Fujitsu 
> > Tech Support tell me the chip is vendor 8086 product a106.
> 
> No.  That's the onboard SATA controller (note that vendor 8086 is
> Intel).
> 
> > I have gone back to square one, initialised a pair of disks in RAID 1
> > mode, set the BIOS to RAID rather than AHCI mode, and see from dmesg
> > that this configures at ahcisata0.
> 
> Well, no.  You need to be careful what you're referring to by
> that "this".  Do you actually intend to use the motherboard SATA
> controller, or just the MegaRAID?  Which one are the disks actually
> cabled to?
> 
> The BIOS settings you describe "RAID rather than AHCI mode"
> as well as the device probed by the kernel "ahcisata0" are for the
> SATA controller integrated into the Intel motherboard chipset, *not* the
> MegaRAID.  The "RAID" setting here is what the Linux kernel calls
> "fakeraid".  You wouldn't want to use it; you don't need it to boot from
> RAID 1 (RAIDframe can do this by itself); but aren't your disks hooked up
> to the MegaRAID anyway?
> 
> 
> > According to Ubuntu it is an LSI SAS-3 3108 (Invader).
> 
> This should be PCI vendor 0x1000 (LSI), product 0x0090.
> 
> Now, you're going to run into another problem.  The SAS[23]xxx products
> can run at least 3 different streams of firmware ("IT", "IR", and "MegaRAID")
> and these present *different* interfaces to the kernel.
> 
> If you have IT or IR firmware, this may be supported by the mpii(4) driver;
> though the product ID for the 3108 isn't in our tree, it may work if you
> just add it.  If you have the heavier "MegaRAID" firmware, you may be out
> of luck; you may need the "mfii" driver instead, and someone would have to
> port that from OpenBSD or FreeBSD.
> 
> I'm not 100% sure I have which-firmware-to-which-driver right, either...why
> they did it this way is beyond me.
> 
> Thor
>