[PVE-User] Boot problem with PERC H310

[Eneko Lacunza]

Hi all,

I'm trying to expand a Dell PE T20 server with a spare PERC H310 card
(LSI2008). It's just to add more ceph disks, I'm not interested in the
RAID capabilities.

T20 server works perfectly with Proxmox 3.2 and 3.3 .

But it fails to boot correctly when I add the PERC H310 card; after grub
screen kernel loads and starts init. After a while, lots of "udevd
timeout: killing /sbin/modprobe ..." appear, and they seem to last forever.

This happens with latest Proxmox 3.3 community kernel and also with
latest debian wheezy kernel.

Any hint to fix it?

Thanks
Eneko

[Michael Rasmussen]

On Tue, 30 Sep 2014 17:57:00 +0200

But it fails to boot correctly when I add the PERC H310 card; after grub screen kernel loads and starts init. After a while, lots of "udevd timeout: killing /sbin/modprobe ..." appear, and they seem to last forever.
This happens with latest Proxmox 3.3 community kernel and also with latest debian wheezy kernel.

Maybe the BIOS tries to boot via the PERC card first which means your
old disks has changed "name" in BIOS. Try to disable its capability to
be used as boot device and see if that does not fixes your problem.
--
Hilsen/Regards
Michael Rasmussen

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[Eneko Lacunza]

Hi Michael,

Post by Michael Rasmussen
On Tue, 30 Sep 2014 17:57:00 +0200

But it fails to boot correctly when I add the PERC H310 card; after grub screen kernel loads and starts init. After a while, lots of "udevd timeout: killing /sbin/modprobe ..." appear, and they seem to last forever.
This happens with latest Proxmox 3.3 community kernel and also with latest debian wheezy kernel.

Maybe the BIOS tries to boot via the PERC card first which means your
old disks has changed "name" in BIOS. Try to disable its capability to
be used as boot device and see if that does not fixes your problem.

Just tried this but didn't help. Seems a megasas driver bug from some
reports found on the net. I'm trying some tweaks to udev and will try
kernel 3.10 also.

I'll report back if I got any success.

Thanks
Eneko

[Eneko Lacunza]

This is for the record;

It seems Dell PERC H310 has a very bad/buggy/slow firmware, that sucks
big time. I wasn't able to make use of the card as-is.

BUT

I installed on the card a LSI target-only firmware (no RAID options, no
boot options) that makes the card faster and... it works OK with linux
Drivers. It is currently working in our ceph storage cluster; server
boots just OK.

Firmware change recipe (there are others, beaware some CLI command typos):
http://www.vladan.fr/flash-dell-perc-h310-with-it-firmware/

Beaware this procedure is not supported by Dell.

Cheers
Eneko

Post by Eneko Lacunza
Hi Michael,

Post by Michael Rasmussen
On Tue, 30 Sep 2014 17:57:00 +0200

Post by Eneko Lacunza
But it fails to boot correctly when I add the PERC H310 card; after
grub screen kernel loads and starts init. After a while, lots of
"udevd timeout: killing /sbin/modprobe ..." appear, and they seem to
last forever.
This happens with latest Proxmox 3.3 community kernel and also with
latest debian wheezy kernel.

Maybe the BIOS tries to boot via the PERC card first which means your
old disks has changed "name" in BIOS. Try to disable its capability to
be used as boot device and see if that does not fixes your problem.

Just tried this but didn't help. Seems a megasas driver bug from some
reports found on the net. I'm trying some tweaks to udev and will try
kernel 3.10 also.
I'll report back if I got any success.
Thanks
Eneko