Easier way to install on 3ware 9550 card?

[Dan Mahoney, System Admin]

On Wed, 3 Jan 2007, John Nielsen wrote:

Apologies for top-posting.

I've made some progress with this, but as I suspected, I'm screwed on 
"namespace collision".  I.e. I am unable to load a version of twa.ko that 
supports my 3ware card because a previous version of twa.ko that does not 
support it is already in the generic kernel.  Changing the name of the 
loadable doesn't help, either.

It looks like I might have to make my own release, and my own ISO, using 
the driver source from the 3ware site.

Does anyone have an easier way of doing this?

I've already emailed Scott Long asking about the possibility of the 
inclusion of the new twa driver in the next FreeBSD, but I fear we're too 
far down the release process, so it could be a YEAR before there's a 
RELEASE that supports it.

-Dan

>> You were on the right track with the emergency shell, but the "Fixit" mode
>> (now included on disk 1 for your convenience) gives you a lot more
>> flexibility (inclusion of "ls" is just the start!). Have you tried
>> something like this?
>>
>> 1) Boot to complete install CD
>> 2) Go into "Fixit" mode (not just the emergency shell)
>> 3) # sysctl kern.module_path="/dist/boot/kernel"
>> 4) # kldload twa
>> 5) # exit
>> 6) proceed with installation
>>
>> This shouldn't be necessary though, since twa is included in GENERIC for
>> both FreeBSD 6.1 and 6.2 (did you say what version you were trying to
>> install?).
>>
>> Now, if your controller is too new to be included in the shipping version
>> of twa then that's another matter. If you have a binary kernel module that
>> uses a different driver name from the vendor you could use the same general
>> approach, but you'd want to configure your network interface and set up
>> your NFS mount prior to step 3, and include the appropriate NFS path in the
>> sysctl command in step 3.
>
> Forgot to mention you'd also need to manually copy the vendor driver and
> modify /boot/loader.conf on the newly installed system so it could actually
> boot.. you could easily take care of that from the fixit mode shell after the
> installation, though.
>

--

"And, a special guest, from the future, miss Ria Pischell.  Miss Pischell,
as you all know, is the inventor of the Statiophonic Oxygenetic
Amplifiagraphaphonadelaverberator, and it's pretty hard to imagine life
without one of those.

-Rufus, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey


--------Dan Mahoney--------
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