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Guide to Native Drivers: DSM 6.1.7 and 6.2.1 on DS3615


flyride

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Which DSM version shall I use?  This is an oft-repeated question, complicated by the fact that different loaders support different DSM versions AND hardware platforms.

In simple terms, DS3615/DS3617 has the widest support for hardware and packages, and DS916/DS918 has support for newer, low-cost CPU's, transcoding and NVMe cache (DS918 only).

 

But the real questions are, what hardware do you have?  What hardware do you want to buy in order to support what you want to do?  And how does a DSM loader and platform support this? In order to answer, it's useful to understand what hardware is natively supported by DSM.  Each DSM version is different as Synology does not need to support many types of hardware, as they build up a specific DSM for each hardware platform they sell.  Fortunately, the base Linux kernel has much broader support for hardware than they intend.

 

Most of us guessed at the hardware requirements and made (hopefully) intelligent selections on DSM versus hardware.  Some build systems and then are distressed when the hardware isn't fully supported by the DSM platform they choose.  Unfortunately, Synology hardware knowledge is often imperfect, as the main boards are custom designed. Refer to the example below for DS3615 (I hope it will be completed more precisely in the future).

 

DS3615xs 

Reference Hardware:  
  CPU: Intel Core i3-4130 (Haswell)
  Chipset: Intel C20x?
  4x1Gbe Ethernet: ???
  Secondary SATA: ???
  10Gbe OEM: E10G18 (Aquantia AQC107)
    E10G17 (Mellanox Connect X-2/3/4)
    E10G15 (Tehuti)

 

With even this information, we can make some good guesses on what hardware might be supported.  We certainly can act on the 10Gbe cards since those are well known.  Wouldn't it be great if we knew ALL the different drivers that are natively supported?  Unfortunately this is a fairly difficult process if you are not a Linux guru (and a bit laborious even if you are).

 

There are "user-reported" hardware compatibility threads out there, but many don't understand that those reports are both DSM version and platform specific. Furthermore, with the way hardware manufacturers reissue hardware with the same name but new PCI device number (such as the Intel PHYs on desktop motherboards), often not enough information is reported to confirm whether a specific piece of hardware is suitable for use.

 

If you aren't sure if your hardware is supported, this post and the complementary DS918 driver guide aim to help you. Download the appropriate Excel spreadsheet to see key driver support in the DS3615 6.1.7 or 6.2.1 Synology custom kernel, and via loadable modules supplied with DSM.  Hopefully it will help you select the best DSM platform for your purposes, and possibly inform your hardware purchases.

 

Common drivers missing from this platform, or newer driver versions that support the latest silicon may be available by installing additional compiled modules.

 

2021-Sep update: Now that folks are testing RedPill loader, they are finding that drivers working in 6.2.3 and earlier are missing in 6.2.4 or 7.0.  This is because many of the drivers are part of the Jun loader and not truly native to DSM.  Yes, the title of this post says NATIVE but for the purposes of the analysis, Jun's injected drivers are considered along with the actual embedded native drivers.

 

DSM 6.1.7 DS3615 V1.04 2019-Feb-04.xls

DSM 6.2.1 DS3615 V1.0 2019-Feb-04.xls

Edited by flyride
Discussion of actual native vs. Jun injected drivers
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Bump for the addition of the 6.2.1 driver guide for DS3615.  Comparing 6.1.7 and 6.2.1 is interesting, and I'll summarize findings here:

  • r8168/r8169 support was completely removed from 6.2.1 on this platform
  • Intel i40e and ixgbe drivers were enhanced on 6.2.1 to support newer cards
  • Mellanox mlx4 and mlx5 drivers were enhanced on 6.2.1 to support newer cards

Comparing DS3615 and DS918, in most cases there continues to be significantly better native driver support in DS3615, especially for 10Gbe+ cards.  DSM supports many more 10Gbe+ cards than Synology lists on their compatibility matrix.

 

However, loader 1.03b is really just broken, with many drivers causing kernel panics at boot, and some not working at all. Those who would use the driver list to inform an expensive hardware purchase should proceed with caution, and/or be willing to step backward to 1.02b and DSM 6.1.7 for compatibility reasons.

 

@jun, if you are reading: there remains a need for the native driver library on DS3615 or DS3617, so if you can work 1.04b magic on the either platform, the community would benefit.

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very useful I have amd opteron 6272 that works with DSM 6.2  3615 but not 3617 dont know why i have tried a lot of stuff but cant get it to work, any thoughts

Supermicro H8SGL-F  c1E disable 

 

the reason i wanted 3617 DSM 6.2 is i know it supports 16 cores ( i have tested it the an intel cpu)

cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep "cpu cores" | sort -u | awk '{print $NF}'

 

Edited by medric
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I’ve been delaying making a similar request as flyride for some time. I am in  agreement regarding the value of Jun focusing his efforts on a 1.04x like loader for the  ds3615 . However the ds3617 has the capability of using the LSI SAS virtual controller on esxi which allows SMART to work on DSM with many SAS drives (not all in my experience).  Ds3615 won’t work with the LSI sas controller  Im not sure if it is a kernel issue or simply a driver issue.

 

If the ds3615 can be made to work with SAS drives then that’s the answer for me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t rule out the value of having a 1.04x type loader for ds3617. I’ve had a ds3617 vm with 8 SAS drives (via rdm and the LSI sas controller) on 1.03b and dsm6.2.0 running 24/7 for months without any crashes or other issues. 

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6 hours ago, wingspinner said:

I’ve been delaying making a similar request as flyride for some time. I am in  agreement regarding the value of Jun focusing his efforts on a 1.04x like loader for the  ds3615 . However the ds3617 has the capability of using the LSI SAS virtual controller on esxi which allows SMART to work on DSM with many SAS drives (not all in my experience).  Ds3615 won’t work with the LSI sas controller  Im not sure if it is a kernel issue or simply a driver issue.

 

If the ds3615 can be made to work with SAS drives then that’s the answer for me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t rule out the value of having a 1.04x type loader for ds3617. I’ve had a ds3617 vm with 8 SAS drives (via rdm and the LSI sas controller) on 1.03b and dsm6.2.0 running 24/7 for months without any crashes or other issues. 

 

Interesting.  I am using that same strategy (virtual LSI SAS to get SMART) to connect to NVMe drives via physical RDM, on DSM 6.1.7 and DS3615.  I don't see any reason one could not attached SAS drives via physical RDM and do the same.

 

On 6.2.x, 1.03b and DS3615, this does not work unless the storage pool is built first using a virtual SATA controller, then go back to the VM config and move the drives to the virtual LSI SAS controller.  I"m not sure if that would work with your SAS drives via RDM, but I suspect it may.

 

Your post however caused me to edit the original "please Jun" request to be agnostic vs. 3615 or 3617.  Obviously if one or the other will be supported, the latest hardware would be a better choice at this point.

Edited by flyride
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I’ll have to give the ds3615 a retry because when I tested on a ds3615 VM with the sas controller it booted once then almost immediately crashed and would not boot thereafter. Didn’t pursue further. Could be I did something wrong so I’ll give it another try and look at the serial output. 

Edited by wingspinner
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  • 4 weeks later...
Le 25/02/2019 à 02:13, wwweagle a dit :

i use intel NIC (9420PT) and it worked in 3615XS 6.2.1

i have a problem.  restart and shutdown don't work 

have anyone a good idea?

Looks like you need to switch ACPI version to 1.0 in bios

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi flyride!

I checked your .xls file (many thanks for that) and I have a question.

I noticed the following:

 

Quote

mpt3sas01.100.01.00built-inSATA/SASLSI LogicSAS2004 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2 [Spitfire]10000070

   SATA/SASLSI LogicSAS2008 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2 [Falcon]10000072

   SATA/SASLSI LogicSAS2108 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-2 [Liberator]10000074 0076 0077

   SATA/SASLSI LogicSAS2208 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-210000080 0081 0082 0083 0084 0085 0086 0087

   SATA/SASLSI LogicSAS2308 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-21000006E

   SATA/SASLSI LogicSAS3108 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-310000090 0094 0095

   SATA/SASLSI LogicSAS3004 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-310000096

   SATA/SASLSI LogicSAS3008 PCI-Express Fusion-MPT SAS-310000097


Not the last line in bold, please.

I am planning to do a new build, as described here.
However I will be using a "Supermicro HBA AOC-S3008L-L8e" RAID controller card. This is based upon LSA SAS 3008 chipset (which is supported apparently according to your .xls).

Will this work with DSM 6.2.1 and DS3615?

I already asked for including the drivers here, however I understand now this is not possible anymore with DSM 6.2.1?

Thanks in advance.

Regards

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4 hours ago, HHawk said:

I am planning to do a new build, as described here.
However I will be using a "Supermicro HBA AOC-S3008L-L8e" RAID controller card. This is based upon LSA SAS 3008 chipset (which is supported apparently according to your .xls).

Will this work with DSM 6.2.1 and DS3615?

 

When you try it, we will know...

 

The spreadsheet doesn't tell you whether particular hardware will work.  For example, we have had some difficulties with booting network drivers in loaders after 1.02.  So even if the NIC is supported (meaning, there is a driver installed that is compatible with the card), there have been kernel panics and other failures.  I have not seen evidence of similarly supported (driver installed in image) disk drivers with problems, but there are no guarantees unless someone else has proven it out with the hardware you are considering.

 

I will say that some implementations of embedded third-party controllers behave differently than the native PCI cards which can cause problems.  The spreadsheet shows exactly which device drivers exist and the PCI device ID's supported by those specific drivers... nothing more or less.

 

If I were in your shoes, I would be very certain that the PCI device ID of the LSI controller embedded on the SuperMicro board is represented in the image you want to use.

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Hi flyride,

Thank you for your detailed information/answer.

I have succesfully flashed the Supermicro HBA AOC-S3008L-L8e card to a "general" LSI 9300-8i following this tutorial.
Unfortunately I cannot test it at the moment. But I will try next week, before I purchase all other hardware. Maybe I will succeed? Hopefully! * crossing fingers *

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  • 8 months later...

Hello everyone,

 

I'm currently using DSM 6.1.7 for DS3615xs on a bare metal HP N40L with loader 1.02b, and pretty pleased with it. However, I'd like to keep as current as possible (notably for security reasons) and I'd like to update the loader to 1.03b (or 1.04b if its a better idea).

 

Since I've tried to read everything of substance on the matter, I believe:

- that the AMD Turion II in the N40L does have the necessary instruction sets to run that loader and DSM 6.2

- that the integrated NIC (BCM5723) is a problem when considering that installation

 

Is any of these assumptions incorrect ?

 

I also noticed that in the compatibility file in the OP, the integrated NIC was listed as using the "built-in" tg3 driver (which it indeed uses on my current DSM6.1 setup). This kind of contradicts my second assumption above, so I'm a bit at a loss.

 

I guess my main question is basically the following: is it possible to install DSM6.2 on my hardware without buying a new NIC ?

 

Thanks a bunch to everyone involved !

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  • 2 weeks later...

The guides lately have been pretty helpful, but I have to say I'm still confused at how this works, or why certain apparent inconsistencies happen. For instance, I'm setting up a new machine with the 1.03b loader and the 6.2 series for the 3615. Jun's loader runs fine and I can load the installation page (http://find.synology.com) and setup the machine, but on reboot after installing the .pat file, it's no longer reachable on the network. Why would the installation load with the correct network driver, but the later step fail to load?

 

Edit: I figured it out, on reboot the system was booting from the USB using UEFI. I had to disable all UEFI booting in the firmware to use 3615 with 6.2. One real bummer though is that hybrid raid/shr no longer seems available in 6.2 for the xs series.

Edited by naasking
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4 hours ago, naasking said:

Jun's loader runs fine and I can load the installation page (http://find.synology.com) and setup the machine, but on reboot after installing the .pat file, it's no longer reachable on the network. Why would the installation load with the correct network driver, but the later step fail to load?

 

"...

The reason why 1.03b loader from usb does not work when updating from 6.2.0 to 6.2.2 is that the kernel from 6.2.2 has different options set witch make the drivers from before that change useless (its not a protection or anything), the dsm updating process extracts the new files for the update to HDD, writes the new kernel to the usb flash drive and then reboots - resulting (on USB) in a new kernel and a extra.lzma (jun's original from loader 1.03b for dsm 6.2.0) that contains now incompatible drivers, the only drivers working reliable in that state are the drivers that come with dsm from synology

..."

https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/21663-driver-extension-jun-103b104b-for-dsm622-for-3615xs-3617xs-918/

 

4 hours ago, naasking said:

One real bummer though is that hybrid raid/shr no longer seems available in 6.2 for the xs series.

 

https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/9394-installation-faq/?tab=comments#comment-81094

 

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On 1/15/2020 at 5:04 PM, lesensei said:

(or 1.04b if its a better idea).

not with that hardware, 1.04b loader is only 918+ and that need min. 4th gen intel cpu (haswell)

https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/13333-tutorialreference-6x-loaders-and-platforms/

 

On 1/15/2020 at 5:04 PM, lesensei said:

- that the AMD Turion II in the N40L does have the necessary instruction sets to run that loader and DSM 6.2

 

3615 or 3617 should work

 

On 1/15/2020 at 5:04 PM, lesensei said:

- that the integrated NIC (BCM5723) is a problem when considering that installation

 

if you use loader 1.03b in its original state you will have to stay with dsm 6.2.0 aka v23739

because of kernel option changes later in the 6.2 versions the driver for 6.2.0 will not work and you will need drivers compiled with these new options

but staying on 6.2.0 defeats your purpose upgrading

i made  drivers for 6.2.2 available mid. december (2nd half about 3615/17), already seen people using it with your hardware

https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/21663-driver-extension-jun-103b104b-for-dsm622-for-3615xs-3617xs-918/

 

On 1/15/2020 at 5:04 PM, lesensei said:

I guess my main question is basically the following: is it possible to install DSM6.2 on my hardware without buying a new NIC ?

yes for 6.2.0 all the time as tg3 driver was in juns default driver set from loader 1.03b and yes for 6.2.2 latest update for about 6 weeks

 

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

Thanks a lot @IG-88

 

Using your extra.lzma and the trick you posted about for updating the initrd and the kernel image worked like a charm. Longest update I've been through as far as i can remember, but everything's in order now.

 

Again, thank you very much for taking the time to make, test and document this for people like myself.

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  • 1 month later...

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