Snow Leopard on SSD

WonkeyDonkey said:

Hi all,

I'm doing some testing here for an updated build.

I got myself a Sandisk Extreme 240Gb SSD drive which has the latest firmware update.

Ive installed Snow Leopard, applied all the relevant patches and updates.

When I use '-v' as a boot option and look through the contents scrolling away, I noticed one line which reads:

'bind(): Cant allocate requested address'

Doing the exact same installation on a mechanical hard drive doesnt show this.

Anybody know what this is referring to or how I can get rid of it ?

When I first saw it, I went straight to the networking section, but everything is in order there.

I also have trim enabler installed and activated.

Any ideas folks ??

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WonkeyDonkey said:

Thanks for the reply there, I wasn't sure if anyone would have any ideas on this. I've had an initial glance at the links but nothing is standing out so far.

I have to say when I first saw 'bind()' I immediately thought networking or related.

Ive tried it with both ethernet disabled and the wireless card removed, but still no joy. That may be down to the fact that a configuration was written somewhere in the system that wasnt changed/removed when I removed the networking stuff.

My other thought was that its something to do with hardware addresses, internally, that are normally handled by the motherboard itself. I've no idea where to start troubleshooting that though, since all hardware shows up as expected.

I have a brand new motherboard here that Im going to try it out with shortly. I'll do the install with all peripherals disabled, and I have a known good DSDT that I created for it too. Its an Asus board this time instead of Gigabyte. There could be another possible; is it a Gigabyte specific oddity ?

This SSD has already cost me a lot in terms of hardware.

I initially tried it out in a Gigabyte Z68MX-UD2H-B3. It, or something about it, blew the ethernet chip on that board. If I set that up and hit F9 in the bios screen, the mac address for the LAN is empty, so its scuppered that board on a hardware level, although the rest of it appears ok. Gutted about this as I cant find a replacement anywhere, and it is now out of production.

I then tried it on a different board; this time a Gigabyte H61M-D2-B3. This time I got a little further, but the optical drive I attcahed to it, which was a Sony Optiarc model, has shown definite issues. It will no longer boot iBoot CD's at all, and is definitely not reading discs as well as before.

All this kit was working absolutely fine prior to attaching the SSD, and as mentioned above, if I do exactly the same setup using a mechanical HDD, everything works as I know it should.

I have a rock solid and very stable power supply, which is a Corsair AX750. So I know its not a power related problem.

The SSD itself is brand new as well.

So yes, a very weird symptom indeed !

If anybody has any other ideas, I would welcome them.

Also, if anyone else here is running Snow Leopard on an SSD, I wonder if they may be kind enough to check the verbose output and see if the same message appears ?

It comes just before the end of that stage of the boot process, just prior to the messages regarding wireless configuration and bringing up the wireless interface.

Again, thanks for your reply

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WonkeyDonkey said:

Well I've been working some more on this; Ive got about as far as I can with it I think.

Now the hardware I previously described was all working flawlessly before, on several different builds, both Sandy Bridge and pre-Sandy Bridge too.

On its own now, it still works ok, except for the ethernet in the Z68 board I mentioned.

What I have done today is put together an older build that I know works solid. Its based around one of the original tonymac builds.

Mobo : P55M-UD4
CPU : Core i7 875K
Ram : 4 x 4 Gb 1600Mhz
GPU : Old Nvidia 7600GS
HDD : Samsung 1Tb HD103SJ
Keyboard and mouse are both standard USB ones.
Wireless is a home made Airport card as detailed in the forums.

This build is rock solid and has served me well for a very long time now !

Onboard ethernet and firewire were both enabled; legacy usb enabled; S3 and 64-bit HPET as well as AHCI mode for the HDD controller.

Ive done a clean install of Snow leopard today; applied all the patches and updates, and installed a couple of basic programs (Browser etc).

Checking the logs, everything was clean and it runs smooth as it always did.

Next I took out the HDD and replaced it with my new SSD.

I then disabled firewire and ethernet and also removed the airport card, so basically I started with as few peripherals as possible.

Again I ran a clean install of Snow Lepard.

Everything went well and as expected; the DVD seems to be reading the iBoot discs again.

The verbose listing still showed the same 'bind' message though, but Ive carried on and installed a few programs as before.

Now here is where it got a little more interesting.

I then reconnected the mechanical HDD as well as the SSD at the same time.

SSD - Port 0
Mechanical HDD - Port 1
DVD - Port 2

Now when I boot it up, if I choose the mechanical HDD i dont get the bind message; if I choose the SSD I still see it.

So the issue is strictly related to the SSD when used to boot the system up.

It doesnt appear to have any adverse effect on performance, and the bind message i see on screen is not shown in any of the system logs. Ive been through those with a fine comb, and not a single reference to 'bind' at all.

I also have the latest trim enabler installed and trim is enabled on the SSD.

Now the hardware seems to have settled a bit and everything seems to be running ok, Im beginning to think it is something deep in the Snow Leopard software that just happens to occur when booting from an SSD. I dont remember when Apple started using SSD's to be honest; it may simply be that Snow Leopard is just not properly optimised for it in some way; least not third party ones anyhow.

Im curious to know if anyone else gets this message though, when running Snowy on an SSD. It may be Gigabyte specific; it may be brand specific for the SSD, or simply the Snow Leopard software itself.

I do have a brand new unused Asus mobo here, which is a Sandy Bridge board, but I cant test that just yet as I dont have all the necessary hardware to build it.

So in summary, right now, everything has settled down and works on a pre-sandy bridge system, with full hardware enabled, original tonymac DSDT installed and all the hardware is correctly recognised. This is the same booting from either drive.

The only difference being that booting from the SSD produces the bind message, whereas booting from the mechanical HDD does not.

This error message is by no means a show-stopper; I just like to work through the verbose output and get rid of as much as possible.

Im thinking at this stage it could also be related to the SF controller within the SSD itself, so I'll be approaching Sandisk support next to see if they have any ideas on it. Since this is a rather old chipset (P55), that may have something to do with it as well, but that wouldnt answer why it happened on the Z68 motherboard.

Im a lot closer than I was, but not quite there yet.

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WonkeyDonkey said:

Well the plot now thickens even further here. Having had the SSD and mechanical drive both connected together and booting them both, I slipped the SSD back in today on its own and guess what ? The damn thing boots without any bind message at all! Talk about weird !

The motherboard configuration hasnt changed at all either.

In answer to your questions,

No, Ive not cloned anything as I prefer to do a clean install with any drive I use.

The firmware is at R201 which is the latested advertisied on Sandisk' site.

Ive run a quick benchmark thing for disk speed; it shows around 265 read and 220 write.

Is this inline with what I should expect ?

The specs state 550 read and 520 write.

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WonkeyDonkey said:

Well it is/was a SATA2 port.

Im readying a different board I have to try this out though. I have an Asus P8H67-I Deluxe here, which has SATA3 ports on it, so will see how that goes.

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