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

[hlalex]

F28_4.18.16-200 running from SATA drive, does not detect NVMe with lsblk or blkid…

4.18.16-200.fc28.x86_64.log
4.18.16-200.fc28.x86_64_lsmod.log

[george1421]

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

Ok, F27 still installs and boots fine. When upgrading to F28, it fails to reboot and drops to a shell

So is these results form FC27 or FC28. I looked at the modules listed and they are found in your FC28. I still don’t understand why its working in FC27 and equally confusing why when you install on sata it doesn’t see the nvme drive, but the installer does. This IS a strange bit of hardware you have.

[hlalex]

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

@george1421 Ok, F27 still installs and boots fine. When upgrading to F28, it fails to reboot and drops to a shell (:/#).

@george1421 Since none of the fresh install methods were working with F28, I tried F27 to make sure there it still worked properly (to rule out any settings/hardware changes). After getting F27 installed and booted properly, I then attempted to upgrade to F28 using the GUI software manager. This resulted in the same failure of F28 to boot as the fresh install method.

The logs I posted are from a fresh install of F28 on a SATA installed in one of the hot swap bays. And I completely agree on the oddness of this adapter. I can only assume they are trying to getthe most from the advertised 2700MB/s read & 1390MB/s write speeds of these drives, but in an easier to manage platform.

[gehasia]

Hi everybody,

My company own one of these too. Same problem with fog which fail on nvme disk not found.

I just installed Fedora 29 which works correctly on it (i’m currently writing with it), i will try to compile a kernel with the fog config to add to my grub configuration and see what happens with the F29 userlands. Years i didn’t compiled a kernel, hope to do it quick ;).

If there is anything you want me to do, ask me, i will keep the computer with me until a solution is found, and can do whatever needed to help resolve this issue.

[Sebastian Roth]

@gehasia You wanna follow the instructions on building your kernel https://wiki.fogproject.org/wiki/index.php/Build_TomElliott_Kernel

You will be done in 20 minutes…

[gehasia]

@Sebastian-Roth Thanks for the link, i was looking for the fog .config and patches in the repos !
I’ll start by compiling the stock fedora kernel from src-rpm (including fedora patches) to get a valid build system, then to compile a stock kernel with the fedora .config then the one from TomElliott with fog patches and see what happens at each step. I’ll try to get back here before end of the day !

[gehasia]

Hi,

after more than 60 kernel compilations, i found the faulty kernel config option :
Please activate CONFIG_VMD=y
Bus Options -> PCI Controller Driver -> Intel Volume Management Device Driver

[george1421]

@gehasia Well done!! It should be pretty easy for the devs to add that kernel module to the next kernel update.

[gehasia]

@george1421

Thanks

Here is the stock Kernel 4.19.4 with the TomElliott .config file and the CONFIG_VMD set to Yes. The FOG patches are not included (this is the stock kernel)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IjtnlavnjQEpgVTyPOSzdkoMQjyH4ZDF/view?usp=sharing

For those who wants to try quickly & report problems is there is any left.

I suppose it should resolve
https://forums.fogproject.org/topic/12658/uefi-dell-workstation-tower-flexbay-pcie-nvme-windows-10-fog-cannot-detect-pcie-nvme-ssd

[Sebastian Roth]

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

after more than 60 kernel compilations, i found the faulty kernel config option :
Please activate CONFIG_VMD=y

Great stuff! Thanks for all the work you’ve put into this. I just worked on adding this to the config and noticed that it seems to be a 64 bit only thing. Is that possible? See here where CONFIG_X86_64 is explicitly is needed. And sure when I tried to add this option to the 32 bit kernel config I couldn’t. Does that make sense to you?

[george1421]

@Sebastian-Roth I think its OK to leave out of the 32bit kernel since we are mainly seeing 32bit kernel used on older hardware and some “special” tablets that have 64bit processors but pinned in 32bit mode. This FlexBay/SAS hardware is super new. I can’t see it being back ported to older systems.
Somewhere in a change log we should note that the “Intel Volume Management Device Driver” kernel driver was specifically left out of the 32 bit kernel by design because it is only supported in 64 bit mode.

[Sebastian Roth]

Kernel option CONFIG_VMD added to the official repo. Will upload new 4.19.6 kernels soon.