Net6501-50 kingston ssd crash serial port not working

stephenw10

Was the serial console working before the crash?
It sounds like you have a bad connection. You can see all the output if just 2 wires (Rx and Gnd) are connected but won't send anything and won't have any hardware flowcontrol.
What are you able to see via serial exactly? BIOS output? Bootloader? Boot menu?

Some Soekris boxes required DMA to be enabled in order to boot where as many embedded boxes won't boot with it enabled. That is the reason that the NanoBSD images have DMA disabled and the Nano+VGA images have it enabled. Since you're running a full install (are you? embedded kernel?) DMA should be enabled by default.

Steve

jimp

kingston ssd

stephenw10

Ha. ;D
I tend to agree although I think much of Kingston's bad rep here was down to their early small SSDs with bad firmware. The ssdnow range if I recall correctly.

Steve

piwwo

Hello sorry for the late reply I had given up the topic already.

Anyhow, yes the serial was working once, I installed it on this. But I don't know if its the soekris or the usb serial adapter thats shitty. Sometimes I can type sometimes not. I tired minicom under Linux and Putty under Windows, see all output but have no input at all. I am now trying again with another ssd. Yes I had a full install on it.

I can boot memstick after giving kernel console output with bautrate but I still have no input.
When pfsense boots, WAN-port comes up and gets an IP but I can not access ssh or webinterface either (connection timeout on both).

stephenw10

It does sound like you have a bad connection somewhere.

Steve

kejianshi

I'm interested in what kind of SSD was being run and if there was some sort of reliable wear leveling or trim? If not - Wouldn't recommend running a full install like that again.

piwwo

The ssd used for install was a ssdnow series drive sms100s2/32g

I also don't understand why I get no input on the consoles. I tried three different USB-Serial adapters and three different computers, one with windows and putty and two with linux. I always get full normal output but can not type a key or command.

stephenw10

Bad console cable? Bad connector on the box?

Steve

piwwo

I don't know, I tried different adapters as said could be the cable but I have only one serial.

Anyhow, when I manage to mount the SSD in another freebsd or pfsense, where do I find the configfile for the fullinstall version? i see there are /cf/conf but it is not a cf card…
And is that on ad6s1a or ad6s2a partition? Both seem same

stephenw10

It's in the /conf folder. In Nano that's a simlink to /cf/conf because as you pointed out it's stored on a separate slice.

Can you test your console cable on some other piece of equipment? Have you tried waggling it? ;)

Steve

kejianshi

This is probably a dumb question, but I know your drive was capable of trim but was trim set up on the pfsense?

piwwo

trim: I didn't know of that feature, so if pfSense didnt set it by default, I probably didn't set it.

About the slice:

g_vfs_done():ufs/pfsense1[READ(offset=1024004096, length=35328)]error = 5
vnode_pager_getpages: I/O read error
vm_fault: pager read error, pid 296 (php)
ad6: TIMEOUT - READ_MUL retrying (1 retry left) LBA=5854679

So it seems that's the one with the error… I can mount ad6s1a without problems but ad6s2a won't allow me to mount it unless I set -o ro therefore I suppose that's the broken one.
Unfortunately I have only one serial cable but three different usb. Their serial ends are male however, so I need a female-female cable to connect them with the soekris. I tried to get a console on another box (not soekris) but that didnt work either.

kejianshi

Yep - Not setting up TRIM will destroy your MLC drive in a hurry.

These will last a good long time with no special treatment. They are SLC

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-313-Series-SLC-SSD-Cache-24GB-mSATA-SSDMAEXC024G3H-HP-P-N-670071-001-/181509630521?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a42d12a39

http://www.ebay.com/itm/111017164826?_trksid=p2060778.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Try to find new spares if you can.

Or, if you feel like playing with TRIM, any good new drive will work IF you enable TRIM.

piwwo

Yes I will need some spares now, I will look your recommendations up and check into trim feature, thank you.