Gigabyte MP30AR0 - UEFI MMC

[Michael Howard]

Hey All,

I asked some questions about this a couple of years back but never got
it resolved. Taking another shot at getting to the bottom of it.

My situation with the MP30AR0 is that when booting from u-boot I only
get one 10Gbe nic but the sdcard (mmc) is available. If I chainload the
Tianocore uefi from u-boot (I've never flashed uefi directly on this
board) I get both 10Gbe nics but the sdcard/mmc is no longer available.

I'm trying to make it so all four sata ports can be used for data and
boot the os from sdcard. I can boot from nfs/usb but would like to get
the sdcard working.

I have had no success with_any_ pcie cards so can't currently go down
that route.

I've tried tweaking the original device tree and booting from u-boot but
either get a failed boot or no change in what is available. I've no idea
yet how to go about messing with uefi to maybe reverse engineer that and
see what gives. Using binwalk doesn't appear to show any dtb but I guess
it uses acpi.

Has anybody with this board got both 10Gbe nics _and_ the sdcard
available? Anybody got pointers as to where to start with the uefi blob?
Why does uefi see the second nic? Anybody had success with pcie cards?

I'm currently using the latest mainline kernel but I've tried many along
the way.

Any pointers thoughts appreciated.

Cheers,

--
Michael Howard.

[Marcin Juszkiewicz]

W dniu 22.10.2023 o 17:56, Michael Howard pisze:

> My situation with the MP30AR0 is that when booting from u-boot I only
> get one 10Gbe nic but the sdcard (mmc) is available. If I chainload the
> Tianocore uefi from u-boot (I've never flashed uefi directly on this
> board) I get both 10Gbe nics but the sdcard/mmc is no longer available.

MP30AR0 is APM X-Gene 1 board (like APM Mustang was), right?

> I'm trying to make it so all four sata ports can be used for data and
> boot the os from sdcard. I can boot from nfs/usb but would like to get
> the sdcard working.

On APM Mustang SD slot was basically backup storage for firmware. When
UEFI was used (I never used U-Boot on it) it could have it in on-board
flash or on SD card (depends on jumper setup). Never used SD card under
Linux. USB ports should work just fine (unless you run kernel older than
3.19).

> I have had no success with_any_ pcie cards so can't currently go down
> that route.

Neither under UEFI not U-Boot? Weird.

> I'm currently using the latest mainline kernel but I've tried many along
> the way.

Mainline should work on those boards. But it may be hard to find someone
who still use X-Gene based systems. They are 10 years old now...

[Michael Howard]

On 22/10/2023 21:33, Marcin Juszkiewicz wrote:
> W dniu 22.10.2023 o 17:56, Michael Howard pisze:
>
>> My situation with the MP30AR0 is that when booting from u-boot I only
>> get one 10Gbe nic but the sdcard (mmc) is available. If I chainload
>> the Tianocore uefi from u-boot (I've never flashed uefi directly on
>> this board) I get both 10Gbe nics but the sdcard/mmc is no longer
>> available.
>
> MP30AR0 is APM X-Gene 1 board (like APM Mustang was), right?

Yep, that's correct.

>
>> I'm trying to make it so all four sata ports can be used for data and
>> boot the os from sdcard. I can boot from nfs/usb but would like to
>> get the sdcard working.
>
> On APM Mustang SD slot was basically backup storage for firmware. When
> UEFI was used (I never used U-Boot on it) it could have it in on-board
> flash or on SD card (depends on jumper setup). Never used SD card
> under Linux. USB ports should work just fine (unless you run kernel
> older than 3.19).
>

The SD slot can be used for recovery but also for the OS, as set out in
the rather scant documentation. Jumpers on 'APM_STRAP1' are configured
to enable boot from SD card. I'd love to know what the other
combinations of the 8 jumpers can achieve but there is no other mention
of 'APM_STRAP1' in their documentation.

>> I have had no success with_any_ pcie cards so can't currently go down
>> that route.
>
> Neither under UEFI not U-Boot? Weird.

Yeah, weird. Never having replaced u-boot with the tianocore uefi image
(only chain loaded it) I decided to bite the bullet and flash tianocore
to see if it made a difference but alas, it didn't. Still no SD card.

I decided, with heart in mouth, to take it a step further and flash the
firmware and bios for the AR1 to my board. Result was I didn't brick it
and whilst the boot is slower (about 3 .5 minutes to get to GRUB) it got
me the desired result. I now have both 10Gb nics _and_ the SD card.

So, with that success in mind, it may be that PCIE works. I'll dig out
all the cards that failed in the past and give them a go.

It maybe old kit but it's still got some kick with 64GB ram, 8 cores, 2
x 10Gb fibre nics and very good stability.

Cheers,

--
Michael Howard.