mounting root failed 13 unknown devices on Supermicro X6DVA (non-scsi)

[douguk]

I'm trying out ESX 3.5u1 but although the install seems to go fine, but when it boots I get an error "mounting root failed" I've look at:

"http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3.5/SATA_mounting_root_failed.html"

If I boot to "service console only" mode, then run lspci, I get about 14 unknown devices including:

Host bridge, various PCI bridge, PIC, ISA bridge and SMbus as well as USB stuff.

From what I've read the best chance of getting this going seems to be to edit the addresses for these items.

Does anyone know how I will identify what to edit and in which files to get these working?

Here's hoping - thanks

Doug

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Hello Doug, what sort of hardware are you using and in particular what model of storage controller does the server have?

[douguk]

Hi Dave, thanks. The motherboard is a Supermicro X6DVA. 2 x Lindenhurst (Nocona) Xeon * 3.6GHz *.

This uses an Intel Chipset (6300ESB ICH) which has 2 x SATA host controllers.

Any help?

Doug

[Dave_Mishchenko]

The 6300ESB is one of the controllers that is recognized by ESX but is not supported. If this is for a production system I would suggest getting someting on the I/O HCL instead of using this.

When you run lspci, the controller should come up as 25b0 or 2651. If it is 2651, then you might need to switch the controller to IDE mode (and thus lose the RAID set). It seems that the with ICH controllers the driver that comes with ESX is not able to support the software RAID functions necessary to support the controllers in RAID mode.

[douguk]

If I run lspci -v I get this in the output ( Rest of the file is attached):

00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 6300ESB SATA Storage Controller (rev 02) (prog-if 8a )
Subsystem: Super Micro Computer Inc: Unknown device 6980
Flags: bus master, 66Mhz, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18
I/O ports at <unassigned>
I/O ports at <unassigned>
I/O ports at <unassigned>
I/O ports at <unassigned>
I/O ports at fc00

Do you think this is it - or do you think perhaps its one of the bridges?

I've also attached the logs from startup. Strange because they suggest to me that the SATA controller is loading ok 😮

Cheers

Doug

[Dave_Mishchenko]

Hi Doug, how did you make out with this. There was a similar problem on this thread that was fixed with using the noapic option during the install. http://communities.vmware.com/message/1002529

In his case it was able to eliminate the subsystem part of the PCI ID which seems to be similar to the problem you have with this part "Subsystem: Super Micro Computer Inc: Unknown device 6980"

[douguk]

Hi Dave, Thanks for your help - I did get 3.5 sort of working by changing the IDE parameters, only to realise that it might be a waste of time as I don't think 3.5 (not 3.5i) permits VMFS on SATA or IDE - unless I'm mistaken. I'm trying out 3.5i and all it's mysteries at the moment - getting cli access or copying VMs seems a bit fraught!

The objective is a simple server based on a Supermicro 2 x 3.6GHz Xeon with better performance than VMware server!!

Cheers,

Doug

[Dave_Mishchenko]

You can't create VMFS on IDE, but you can with the SATA controllers that work. These SATA controllers aren't supported and performance will be questionable, so you might consider added a dual mode SAS/SATA controller from the HCL - ideally something with battery backed write cache.

ESXi could likewise be made to work, but it's a bit more tricky and I'd suggest installing ESXi to a USB flash drive and then modifying it to recognize the SATA controller.