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[SOLVED!] "Configuration lost" on almost every reboot?


Steel275

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I have installed XPEnology on my newly built NAS. It works perfectly, until I reboot. It seems that a normal reboot is fine, but if the server is turned off and on again, all configuration is lost. I get the reinstall screen when I access the NAS and have to start over again. The data is still there, the volumes are detected, but all config is reset. Is this fixable, and why does it happen?

 

Also, if I use more than 6 drives, only 6 are detected (different 6 every reboot... :roll: ).

 

Hardware:

* Gigabyte B85M-DS3H-A motherboard

* Pentium G3258 CPU

* 8 GB DDR3 RAM

* Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 SAS HBA controller (Marvell 6480 chip)

* Supermicro SC825 case with 8x hotswap drives.

Edited by Guest
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Not sure what your issue is but if I was you I would first start by burning your bootloader again on your usb stick to make sure the problem is not on that side. I doubt it though. After and If possible I would also reinstall DSM and use one Hard drive to start with and see if you have the same problem. Then add each drive at a time and reboot each time.

 

To me it looks like a permission related problem where it gets reset after a shutdown.

 

If anyone has a better explantion please correct me.

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I have created the USB stick using the IMG file and dd. Maybe I should try using the ISO and Unetbootin instead...

 

Does XPEnology write anything to the USB stick? Since you can use and ISO, my guess is "no"?

 

I have re-written the USB stick several times already, but only from the IMG file.

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*UPDATE*

 

I have now spent the evening digging through debug.log, dmesg and BIOS. It seems there are several problems here:

 

1. When ever i start the machine from powered off, the drives don't spin up until the mvsas driver is loaded by xpenology. As it does this, it doesn't wait long enough for the disks to spin up and initialize (I found that SATA drives are slower to finish than SAS drives, this might be part of it?). And since XPEnology doesn't seem to work well with hot swap, it never detects the remaining drives. Hence the "configuration lost" message, since it detects disks missing. Is there any way of extending this timeout?

 

If I then reboot or reset the machine, everything is working after boot. No configuration is actually lost.

 

2. The SAS card in combination with the onboard SATA controller (total 8 + 6 = 14 possible drives) somehow crashes the disk handler on boot (general protection fault) as it reaches drive 13. The stack trace shows SetSCSIHostLedStatusBy9235GPIOandAHCISGPIO being the culprit. I have logs saved if anyone is interested.

 

I disabled the onboard SATA controller, and now the machine boots as it should and detects all eight drives.

 

I still need to test cold booting after doing all this, but the server is expanding a volume at the moment. I'll be back!

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I'm running several bare metal units with the MV8 controller which are 'stable'. (12 drives, 4 native SATA and 8 MV8) However on one occasion I was experimenting with a build and only had a (SATA) drive connected to the MV8 and that kept losing config as you have seen. Its not affected my 'production' boxes as I have drives on the internal SATA controllers that are higher in the boot order (I think that DSM gets read from the highest boot order drive). Also check the MV8 firmware/ bios, on my boards I see a marvell bios start up screen, the drives/channels are tested 1 by 1, all spin up and you should see a progress screen of them all. latest firmware is here ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/driver/SAS/Mar ... /Firmware/

Also try - disabling two of the internal SATA channels (if possible) so your maximum configuration is 12 disks, the DS3612 default, and splitting disks in combinations across the internal SATA and MV8, eg 2 + 4, 4 + 2 and work up to 4 + 4 etc

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*UPDATE*

 

I have now spent the evening digging through debug.log, dmesg and BIOS. It seems there are several problems here:

 

1. When ever i start the machine from powered off, the drives don't spin up until the mvsas driver is loaded by xpenology. As it does this, it doesn't wait long enough for the disks to spin up and initialize (I found that SATA drives are slower to finish than SAS drives, this might be part of it?). And since XPEnology doesn't seem to work well with hot swap, it never detects the remaining drives. Hence the "configuration lost" message, since it detects disks missing. Is there any way of extending this timeout?

 

If I then reboot or reset the machine, everything is working after boot. No configuration is actually lost.

 

2. The SAS card in combination with the onboard SATA controller (total 8 + 6 = 14 possible drives) somehow crashes the disk handler on boot (general protection fault) as it reaches drive 13. The stack trace shows SetSCSIHostLedStatusBy9235GPIOandAHCISGPIO being the culprit. I have logs saved if anyone is interested.

 

I disabled the onboard SATA controller, and now the machine boots as it should and detects all eight drives.

 

I still need to test cold booting after doing all this, but the server is expanding a volume at the moment. I'll be back!

Xpenology supports 12 drives max, more is possible you have to edit a conf for that

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Ok, no luck cold booting with onboard SATA off.

 

Also check the MV8 firmware/ bios, on my boards I see a marvell bios start up screen, the drives/channels are tested 1 by 1, all spin up and you should see a progress screen of them all. latest firmware is here ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/driver/SAS/Mar ... /Firmware/

Aha, that might do the trick. I don't get any messages from the Marvell controller at all during boot (which confused, there's usually something). I wil try it.

 

Did you check the hardware supported list:

viewtopic.php?t=10973

Yes, Marvell 6480 is on there.

 

Xpenology supports 12 drives max, more is possible you have to edit a conf for that

I suspected as much. I'm not going to run more than that, so that's ok. :smile:

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make sure you download the file, 'firmware_3.1.0.21.zip', that contains the flashing utility.

Yes, the other one also contained a different utility, but I went with this one. It turns out that the card HAD NO FIRMWARE AT ALL! :shock: Not sure how that is possible, or how that works, but I guess it just runs in a "bypass" mode or something. After flashing 3.1.0.21, I get messages and setup utility during boot, the disks spin up and XPEnology works! Thanks a lot! :grin:

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