Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:18:17 +1000 (EST) From: Ian Smith <smithi@nimnet.asn.au> To: Andy Dills <andy@xecu.net> Cc: "freebsd-stable@freebsd.org" <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org>, "Harris, James R" <james.r.harris@intel.com> Subject: RE: FreeBSD 8.3-R sysinstall does not "see" disks that are recognized during boot Message-ID: <20120419234841.H36310@sola.nimnet.asn.au> In-Reply-To: <20120418140842.P34903@shell.xecu.net> References: <20120417195749.L89206@shell.xecu.net> <A35C21583F92CE4D8ADBF9D61694E91009ECE3@FMSMSX106.amr.corp.intel.com> <20120418140842.P34903@shell.xecu.net>
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On Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:17:31 -0400 (EDT), Andy Dills wrote:
> On Wed, 18 Apr 2012, Harris, James R wrote:
> >
> > Andy and I worked this out offline - workaround was to go to
> > Options|Re-scan which caused the devices to show up in the sysinstall
> > menu. I'm adding details here for future reference.
> >
> > 1) C60x chipsets have the 6 traditional SATA ports, plus 4 or 8 SAS
> > ports. Only the latter are controlled by the isci(4) driver.
> > 2) The IDE/AHCI/RAID modes apply only to the traditional SATA ports.
> > 3) In Andy's case, going to Options|Re-scan Devices caused the disks to
> > show up. This problem seems to be system or platform-dependent, as I
> > was not able to reproduce with 8.3 memstick image on my C600 systems.
> > 4) There was a problem with initial device scan using isci(4) on
> > 7-STABLE, which necessitated r233371. This was MFC'd back to 8-STABLE,
> > but after 8.3 was released. I'm fairly convinced this is the root cause
> > of Andy's problem, but don't have any easy way to verify.
>
> First, I want to thank James and the other responders for help getting me
> squared away.
>
> Something that may be of specific use for others (James has covered the
> most relevant points...at blazing speed, what an asset to the community),
> is that the isci support in 8.3-R will now enable FreeBSD compatibility
> with most of the new Supermicro server platforms.
>
> And a new lesson was learned....first thing to try when sysinstall fails
> to recognize hardware is to re-scan devices. Never needed that across
> thousands of installs (dating to 2.2.8), and didn't even know it existed.
Yes. This same thing happen{s,ed} in sysinstall with memstick installs
- and perhaps other SCSI over USB devices? - with some sticks and/or on
some boxes; in particular after happily booting into sysinstall from a
memstick, then not finding the same daX thereafter to install from.
Bruce Cran added a message to the 'No disks found' dialog suggesting
trying Options/Rescan Devices, which 'solved' the problem for that then
quite commonly reported problem, for 8.1-R or so. Apparently the dialog
message was only updated specifically for USB-based da devices ..
cheers, Ian
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