Re: [problem] mpt2sas load fails with LSISAS2008

[Paul Johnson <pjay@nwtrail.com>]

On 02/10/2015 08:49 AM, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
> We need to work out what's going wrong here before we rush into a band-aid.
>
> What changed between v3.4 and v3.4.1 that exposed this problem?  "git
> log --oneline v3.4..v3.4.1" doesn't show any likely culprits.  Paul,
> are those the versions you tested?  Your dmesg logs at
> https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=92351 show
> "3.4.0-030400-generic" and "3.4.1-030401-generic" but I don't know
> whether those are precisely v3.4 and v3.4.1.
>
> I assume this system works fine with Windows, and I doubt Windows has
> a hack like "never move LSI devices."  So it would be useful to know
> if we're doing something stupid in Linux that makes us trip over this.
> Paul, if you happen to have Windows on this machine as well, a
> complete AIDA64 report (free trial version at http://www.aida64.com)
> would show what Windows did.
>
> The resource allocation we're doing is related SR-IOV, and
> unfortunately we don't print enough information in dmesg to figure
> everything out.  Paul, can you attach the complete "lspci -vv" output
> to the bugzilla?
>
> Bjorn
>
The system I have had this problem on is in production, though it should 
be replaced by a real server. Because it is in use, I have used a 
separate boot disk to test kernels. I also have limited access to take 
the machine down. The system runs ubuntu server, though I have used an 
ubuntu desktop to test kernels. There is not a windows system on the 
machine, though, just guessing, LSI likely provides the windows driver 
and that driver may well have dealt with a problem that is looking to be 
specific to a firmware/bios version on this card.

Someone found another of these cards here, so I tried it last night in 
an unused machine. It worked on the ubuntu 3.13 kernel without realloc. 
The card that has been the problem has these versions of firmware:
[    9.004647] mpt2sas0: LSISAS2008: FWVersion(17.00.01.00), 
ChipRevision(0x03), BiosVersion(07.33.00.00)

and the card that works has a newer version:
[   15.725011] mpt2sas0: LSISAS2008: FWVersion(18.00.00.00), 
ChipRevision(0x03), BiosVersion(07.35.00.00)

Now, the cards are in very different machines so the difference could be 
due to the machines and not the firmware, but I would tend to go with 
the firmware difference. LSI firmware is now beyond both these firmware 
versions, but if I can find a copy of the older firmware, I'll try it on 
the card with the newer firmware.

Just a suggestion, but from the linux end, if you could trap the older 
firmware version and put a message out about the realloc flag and 
firmware version, that would help someone else who might fall into the 
same hole I found myself in.

Paul