Dell doesn't support every distribution under the sun.   They support UBUNTU and Redhat. So unless the "problem" can be clarified to exactly what is wrong there wont be a bios fix or any other support.

http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/catalog/component/pci/8086:8c31/

http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/201308-14158/

 http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/hardware/201308-14158/components/

Open BSD Developers have "issues" with XHCI

http://www.openbsd.org/want.html

 The driver did not exist until 5.6 and 5.9 is the current version of Open BSD.  There is no such thing as one size fits all all versions.

In short OPEN BSD is not supported here.

Specific devices and equipment needed by our developers

• Machines with non-working xhci(4) "Intel 7 Series xHCI" and "Intel 8 Series xHCI" USB3 controllers (e.g. Dell Optiplex 3020 or 7010) are needed in Aachen, Germany. The xhci driver was written by Martin Pieucho Contact
   mpi  AT openbsd.org.

I don't expect dell to write drivers for other open source opening systems. In the past dell's hardware and bios were pretty open source friendly in my experience.

When the xhci driver tries to load with a device plugged into the usb bus, the boot process stops when the xhci driver tries to load. When nothing is plugged into the usb bus, the boot will complete but the usb ports won't recognize devices plugged into it. Same issue with both the Intel 7 and 8 chip sets.

The only way around this is to disable the xhci drivers in the kernel and to force the boot process to load the older ehci driver which only supports usb 2.0.

As I said with HP Deskpro machines using the same Intel ver 7 or 8 usb chipset sets, the xhci driver loads without a problem.

If Dell doesn't want to spent time on debugging the problem, perhaps Dell Germany would be willing to loan martin an Optiplex 7010 since the problem seems to have started with the bios in that model hardware.

Hello,

we are trying to install openbsd on a R230 and we have the same issues.

what do you mean with "force the boot process to load the older ehci driver"? The ehci driver is enabled by default, anyway we also tried to disable ehci and ohci (using uhci) but the keyboard stop working immediately after boot.

The trick works with a 5.5 disabling also acpi, but not with 5.9. Moreover it not works on all server, but they are identical (bios version and so on). . What workaround did you use exactly?

TIA

If you know how to use UKC to disable drivers during boot -c just

disable xhci

The system will then load ehci drivers which work fine for me.

You can then use the config command to create a modified kernel that skips the xhci driver.

ps

Hello, yes we did the same but the keyboard stop working after kernel boot. We solved installing openbsd 5.9 via serial console and then disabling xhci in kernel but there is no way to use the keyboard or idrac virtual console, we can manage the server only via ssh or RS232.

I wonder if Dell could donate a piece of hardware to the OpenBSD team... ;)

With OpenBSD 6.0 (snapshot) the installation works fine, there are no issues with XHCI.

There are still issues with the iDRAC (once the machine has booted, is impossible to write inside the console).

PowerEdge R230, iDRAC Virtual Console 5.04.04

OpenBSD 6.0 stable now boots properly with the Dell bios, loading the xhci driver. Keyboard and mouse work normally. The errata for 6.0 says work was done on the xhci hand off to the Dell bios.

Nice!