Dell Precision Tower 5820 - FlexBay MiniSAS PCIe NVMe SSD not recognized

[Sebastian Roth]

@bright23 I guess @george1421 is on holiday leave at the moment as I have not heard from him in the past days. He’s been doing a brilliant job debugging this issue and I don’t think it’s wise if I get into this. Let’s hope he’s coming back soon.

[george1421]

@Sebastian-Roth I paused debugging on this issue. It appears that something changed in the linux kernel between 4.13.9 and 4.15.2 to causes these flex bays to not init correctly. Without having one of these systems in my hands its hard to debug exactly what is going on. I’m sure they moved some of the core code to an independent module.

The only thing I can think of to get by this issue immediately is to rebuild the inits and set the minimum kernel level to 4.13 to allow the 4.13.x kernels I built to use the current inits. Its not a nice answer, but until I happen to order one of these systems its hard to see what is actually going on.

[Sebastian Roth]

@george1421 said in Dell Precision Tower 5820 - FlexBay MiniSAS PCIe NVMe SSD not recognized:

until I happen to order one of these systems its hard to see what is actually going on.

Either that or @bright23 you are getting into kernel compiling and debugging the issue with our help. Are you keen to?

[george1421]

@Sebastian-Roth said in Dell Precision Tower 5820 - FlexBay MiniSAS PCIe NVMe SSD not recognized:

Either that or @bright23 you are getting into kernel compiling and debugging the issue with our help. Are you keen to?

I still have my kernel build environment setup if something needs to be compiled. I can grab the latest linux kernel and rebuild it in the AM if needed.

[matijn]

@hlalex FOG seems to work when NVMe’s not plugged in ODD sata ports / Dell 8520.

N I C E

[george1421]

@matijn Thank you for providing feedback on this issue, since it has been driving us crazy not having the hardware on hand.

Just so I understand the picture here. FOG Images OK when connected to the sata ports as listed in the picture? Again for clarity the picture above shows a working solution?

I take it the ODD sata ports are the special new data ports? From within windows, can you tell what hardware ID is associated with those ODD ports? I feel that the linux kernel is missing a needed driver, but we can’t seem to identify it.

[matijn]

@george1421
What I understand, out of dell 5820 owners manual:
https://topics-cdn.dell.com/pdf/precision-5820-workstation_owners-manual2_en-us.pdf

ODD is Optical Disk Drive. Maybe wrong assembly.
I can confirm, capture and deploy task, no issue. OK.
I will update this on the hardware id question…

[Quazz]

Because they’re marked as ODD, they might be on a different controller altogether and possibly with more limited functionality too.

[hlalex]

@matijn I actually did not have issues with the ODD ports (when used with 2.5 SSDs), they connect the two SATA ports on our 5820s. The two FlexBay ports are connected to PCIE0 and PCIE1, which are a mini-sas type connector (pic below). I can’t remember if I tried moving the flexbay NVMe to the standard hot swap bays, but I don’t believe I did.

[george1421]

@hlalex This is all great info guys. Thank you.

Its hard without having the hardware in hand for the developers to find out what’s missing. Seeing is better than trying to imagine what things look like.

[matijn]

@george1421

[hlalex]

@george1421 I got another system with the flex bay adapter via mini-sas port (Precision 7820). I was able to persuade the owner of said system to let me borrow the flex bay adapter for testing Fog. I now have a 5820 installed with the flex bay if you have any tests you would like to run

[george1421]

@hlalex So how does this flex bay adapter interface with the mobo? Is it via the connectors mentioned below?

[hlalex]

@george1421 Ok, so the NVMe drive fits into a proprietary carrier, which then slides into a 3.5" SAS adapter (pics below). That slides into one of the two top hot swap bays on the 5820. The backplane on those bays connects to the MoBo via mini-SAS headers that Dell labels PCIe0 & PCIe1 (previous post).
EDIT: Forgot to mention, Windows recognizes the disk as @Matijn posted (PC400 NVMe SK hynix…). Not sure where to look for information on the actual hardware connection. Also, If i plug the 3.5" adapter into one of the bottom hotswap ports (SATA/SAS MoBo connection) it is not recognized at all.

[george1421]

@hlalex Those pictures are very helpful. I still have the question on how does this carrier connect into the motherboard or is it via a sas riser card?

[hlalex]

@george1421 It connects directly to the MoBo beside the CPU slot, I posted a pic of the PCIE headers ~7 posts back.

[george1421]

@hlalex ok thank you for the clarity. Between your pictures and a few Dell youtube videos I understand how everything plugs in.

I’ve been trying to think of a solution to get us where we need to be. I’m wondering if you have time, can you install fedora 28 on that workstation? Then upgrade the kernel to 4.18.x if its not already there? https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Kernel

If this works with fedora 28 and linux kernel 4.18.x then maybe we can reverse engineer what is missing. We’ll need you to run the same collection scripts you had before because that collected exactly what we needed. If it works the only additional output would be a lsmod command to find out what modules were currently loaded.

If you did not want to write to the nvme disks, installing fedora on a sata disk would also work as long as the nvme tray disk is installed and detected by the OS.

[matijn]

This post is deleted!

[george1421]

@matijn OK I’ve read your post 6 times and I don’t understand what you are saying. Sorry I feel I need more coffee this morning.

Are you saying that the latest FOG kernel at 4.18.11 works with this flexbay NVMe?

[Padcotton]

Haha, so many questions here.
And so little answers. Its actually rather funny how long this whole conversation has been going for.
Good luck in figuring this out !