FreeBSD 9 and Marvell 88SE9230 controller - hot plug issue

I'm using an Asrock c2750d4i board to build a ZFS NAS server: http://www.asrock.com/server/overview.a ... l=C2750D4I

The board has 12 SATA ports as below:
Code:
Intel® C2750 : 2 x SATA3 6.0 GB/s, 4 x SATA2 3.0 GB/s
Marvell SE9172: 2 x SATA3 6.0 GB/s
Marvell SE9230: 4 x SATA3 6.0 GB/s

I installed NAS4Free 9.2 and 9.1 (which is just FreeBSD 9.2 and 9.1)

everything works fine, except I can not get hot plug working on the 4 ports under marvell 88es9230

under these 4 ports, hot remove is okay, i can see dmesg say drive removed, and the /dev/ada2 will disappear, but after hot plug a disk, I can not see HDD plug in dmesg, and can not find /dev/ada* appears even after using camcontrol rescan all.

and under all other 8 ports hot plug and hot remove all works fine.

And I tested this board under Windows 7, all 12 ports can do hot plug and hot remove well.

So, I think it's a FreeBSD driver problem.
And now asrock confirmed this is a freebsd driver issue, but they can only say sorry, so i want to know if freebsd team can do anything about this.

Thanks.
 
Re: FreeBSD 9 & marvell 88SE9230 controller - hot plug issue

Probably not related, but yesterday I just installed a new Intel board with the Xeon CPU and saw Enable SATA hotplug choice for individual SATA ports on the board in the BIOS. I can't recall such an option on any of dozens of board types with SATA ports I have installed before. IMHO it is worth checking if there isn't something disabled in the BIOS and/or if there isn't a newer BIOS for the given board available.
 
Re: FreeBSD 9 & marvell 88SE9230 controller - hot plug issue

ondra_knezour said:
Probably not related, but yesterday I just installed new Intel board with the Xeon CPU and saw Enable SATA hotplug choice for individual SATA ports on the board in the BIOS. I can't recall such option on any of dozens board types with SATA ports I have installed before. IMHO it is worth check if there isn't something disabled in BIOS and/or if there isn't newer BIOS for the given board available.

The 88se9230 chip has a pre BIOS setting interface, and I can set AHCI mode in it. The problem is at the same setting, FreeBSD can not get hot plug working but Windows 7 can.
 
Re: FreeBSD 9 and Marvell 88SE9230 controller - hot plug iss

Asrock has confirmed it's a FreeBSD problem, but seems will leave this issue there. Can FreeBSD do anything about it?
 
Hopefully, to close this thread on a happy note...

Apparently it may not simply be a FreeBSD problem, here is a link showing people using Ubuntu having similar issues with that controller, and ultimately ASRock offering a solution: http://forums.tweaktown.com/asrock/56191-c2750d4i-marvel-9230-sata-port-problems-2.html#post496812

In any industry, manufacturers tend to point the finger at, well, anyone else, until there is enough noise to warrant having someone take a closer look. ASRock did it to you, and more than likely, Marvell did it to their customers too...but it would be the same with anyone, more than likely.

So, maybe the ASRock board is ok after all?
 
Just a few things you probably already know or have tried.

- AHCI is normally required for hot swap.
- Try different SATA cables. All SATA cables aren't created equal.
- Update the Marvell firmware -> http://www.asrockrack.com/support/ipmi.asp#Marvell9230
- If the firmware is already on that version try the older/last version.
- Try different BIOSs. I've seen BIOS updates fix one thing and break another.
- Try disabling Aggressive Link Power Management in the BIOS. Sometimes things don't wake up correctly.
- If there's a hot swap option in the BIOS try without it enabled. It's possible the software can handle it.

If you have a spare drive try FreeBSD 10.1 - even if only to test the hot swap.
I've never used FreeNAS - but if 10.1 works replicating the NAS settings in 10.1 shouldn't be hard.

-GL
 
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