ICH7 SATA RAID Broken, Was (Re: Timescale for 6.1-RELEASE...)

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Nikolas Britton [mailto:nikolas.britton at gmail.com]
>Sent: Wednesday, April 12, 2006 5:47 PM
>To: Ted Mittelstaedt
>Cc: freebsd-stable at freebsd.org; sos at freebsd.org
>Subject: ICH7 SATA RAID Broken, Was (Re: Timescale for 6.1-RELEASE...)
>
>
>On 4/12/06, Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm at toybox.placo.com> wrote:
>>
>> >-----Original Message-----
>> >From: Ted Mittelstaedt [mailto:tedm at toybox.placo.com]
>> >Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2006 6:04 PM
>> >To: Nikolas Britton
>> >Cc: Harrison Peter CSA BIRKENHEAD; freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>> >Subject: RE: Timescale for 6.1-RELEASE...
>> >
>> >>-----Original Message-----
>> >>From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>> >>[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of
>> >Nikolas Britton
>> >>Sent: Tuesday, April 11, 2006 1:25 PM
>> >>To: Ted Mittelstaedt
>> >>Cc: Harrison Peter CSA BIRKENHEAD; freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>> >>Subject: Re: Timescale for 6.1-RELEASE...
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>I think the ICH7 sata problem has already been fixed, check the logs
>> >>here: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/dev/ata/ if not
>> >>jump onto the stable mailing list and start waving your hands.
>> >>
>> >
>> >I'm doing a make release on today's cvs as we speak, I'll
>see tomorrow
>> >if it recognizes the disks.
>> >
>>
>> Nikolas,
>>
>>   Just an update, no the ICH7R problem has not been fixed.
>>
>>   OpenSUSE recognizes the array, though.
>>
>
>Send email to Søren Schmidt sos at FreeBSD.org

I have been already.  Soren is very responsive to PR's if the people
filing them meet him halfway and he responded as soon as the PR was
filed.

>and/or post this on the
>stable mailing list, their is nothing I can do personally that will
>fix it for you.

I know that.  What I was pointing out is that while your
enthusiasm is commendable, FreeBSD 6.1 really isn't totally
ready for prime time.

The HP DL320 G4 is a pretty cheap server - it's positioned
squarely to compete agressively with the black box intel motherboard
servers out there.  It's also got an embedded remote control package
that is fantastic - you can do a nuke and repave of the server
remotely if you want.  We are going to see a lot of these out
there pretty soon.  And if HP could fuck up the SATA controller
to make it not work, then other server vendors can do it also.
I suspect this is the tip of the iceberg with the ICH7R controllers.
Damn Intel for designing a controller that apparently lets
designers "improve" it.

>You could start hacking away at the problem if you
>know some C, digging around in /usr/src/sys/dev/ata/
>

Soren sent a patch this morning which I think gave him
some more data to work with.  We will see.

Unfortunately, though, getting the SATA controller working on this beast
is just the first problem - there's also (I suspect) something
not kosher about the ethernet ports either.  But until I get a
system on it, I can't dig into that.

Ted