X520 82599ES: Unable to allocate bus resource: memory

Networking Networking Hardware
1

Hi Community!

I’m using a Intel X520 Dual SPF+ Nic on a SuperMicro A2SAV with 8 GB of RAM. I’ve installed TrueNAS-12.0-U8.

In the network interface list I’m not seeing the network card and when checking dmesg I see following messages:

lo0: link state changed to UP
ix0: <Intel(R) X520 82599ES (SFI/SFP+)> at device 0.0 on pci9
ix0: Unable to allocate bus resource: memory
ix0: Allocation of PCI resources failed
ix0: IFDI_ATTACH_PRE failed 6

The error message indicates some sort of issue with memory, but I suspect it’s not about the system memory. I did some google searching and the card seems to be either not supported or there is some bios setting that I could change, however I didn’t come to any conclusion.

Any tips and hints on what to try or debug?

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I have an X550-T2 and to make it work I needed to go into the UEFI and activate ARI support and set it to enabled, and I needed to set the kernel parameter pci=realloc. After setting the kernel parameter you need to regenerate your initramfs or distributions equivalent of that. Then your NIC should work an be able to use its SR-IOV capabilities. Please let me know of this was of help to you.

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I needed this as well to get my x520 working on an older x99 based system.

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4

Thank you both for your tips so far. I’ve tried following:

/boot/loader.conf:

  1. Adding: hw.pci.clear_bars=“1”
  2. Adding: hw.pci.clear_buses=“1”
  3. Adding: hw.pci.realloc_bars=“1”
  4. Updating BIOS to 1.2c

So far I was not sucessfull. The BIOS update introduced however another problem:
sdhcipci0-slot0: controller-timeout which I was able to resolve with hint.sdhci_pci.0.disabled="1" in /boot/devices.hints.

The Intel card however has still the same problem.

5

Did the card previously work in the system? If you boot something like the Ubuntu desktop live image, does it work?

Can you try a different slot?

Intel removed the card from their Windows driver package, but that’s not going to affect *nix, unless Truenas is doing something funky with driver modules.

I don’t have any other troubleshooting advice.

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Does your BIOS have a “Above 4G decoding” option that you can enable?

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Yes it does, but that didn’t help either.

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Did you set the kernel parameter and UEFI option as I asked. If so did anything change?

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I would also trying to add some more RAM first. 8GB is very low for truenas and the Intel NICs seem hungry for it. If you have a number of PCIe devices, then they, along with the OS/ZFS, might be competing for allocation.

Edit: I might be totally wrong about how all of this works, I am just guessing.

Edit2: OK I might be totally wrong but do try with more RAM if you have available.

It also seems like it could be a BIOS issue. Make sure you are on the latest BIOS version. Similar issue with HP microserver: https://jira.ixsystems.com/browse/NAS-108878?page=com.deniz.jira.similarissues%3Asimilar-issues-tab-panel

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Unfortunately I did all of that already, however the mainboard supports only 8 GB maximum.

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Yes, see my previous post.

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Sorry I was wondering what you did there. I just understood that you seem to have installed TrueNAS bare metal, am I right? The the kernel parameters I provided won’t work because you have a system based on BSD. I think you figured as much, since you seem to have adopted the parameters. At least following the BSD hardware compatibility list the NIC should work. Maybe you should ask in a BSD related forum or mailing list. I personally, and it seems most people on here, only have limited BSD knowledge. My personal experience with the X550 was based on a Linux host.

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If you search for “Unable to allocate bus resource: memory” you will find some posts on netgate or truenas forums, both are BSD based and might be of help.

Just as a last troubleshooting step, I would temporarily try to disable any PCIe devices I could through the BIOS and see what happens.

Also, it seems like your PCIe slot is a PCIe Gen2 x2 electrically, I am sure that the Intel NIC doesn’t like that at all.

Edit: One last thing. Try to disable all C States and power saving settings as well.

14

Thanks for all your help. I think at this point it’s probably a limitation of this (old) mainboard. Currently I’m running it using the built-in 1 GB NIC, and I’ll try all the suggestions once I get to it.

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