Starting gvinum/vinum with RAID 5 and Compaq 39160 - 5.3-STABLE

[Michael L. Squires]

I've been playing with vinum and gvinum with a RAID-1 boot setup (now 
abandoned, hardware RAID was $29 - SM P4DC6+ with Adaptec 2005S) and with 
a RAID5 array using a Compaq version of the Adaptec 39160 card.

I've found that only "geom_vinum_load="YES" works in order to get the RAID 
5 array mounted at boot time; "vinum_load" with or without 
"vinum.autostart" doesn't work.  (Doesn't work means that the boot fails 
when /dev/vinum/raid can't be mounted as per /etc/fstab, and I have to 
execute "vinum" before I can mount it while running single user after the 
crash).

I've seen one other message that "vinum_load" didn't work for one other 
5.3-R user, but I don't know if we both made the same mistake or if 
something else is wrong.

(The Compaq card won't configure on my system; I found that I could 
flash it using the v2.57 Adaptec BIOS update and after that I could 
set the bus speed and turn off the BIOS (otherwise the disks are all 
attached "async" and the system tries to boot off the 39160). Adaptec 
warns of dire consequences, and the flash does not remove the 
identification of the card as a Compaq OEM version, but I haven't had 
problems after the BIOS update).

Mike Squires