Intel Matrix RAID on 6.1

[Jordon Hofer]

A while back I posted this:

> I am building a server for where I work.  It has an Intel D945Gtp  
> based
> motherboard with 945G/ICH7R chipset and Martix RAID.  With 6.0, I  
> would boot
> off the CD and toward the end of listing all the devices, it would  
> coredump
> due to a divide by zero.  If I would remove all the hard drives (4  
> 250G SATA
> Barracudas), it would get to the install menu just fine, but there  
> wasn't
> much point in it, as there were no hard drives attached!
> I gave 6.1b3 a try last night and it worked fine!  I got it  
> installed (using
> RAID5) and it runs fine.
> I just thought I'd let you guys know that I already prefer 6.1 over  
> 6.0!


I have since discovered the following: If a hard drive dies or is  
disconnected, the RAID5 array falls back to a DEGRADED state and  
FreeBSD6.1 no longer runs on that machine!  I got the system up and  
running with 6.1_RELEASE and just to test the RAID, I pulled out one  
of the hard drives.  I got a kernel message saying that the RAID had  
fallen into a degraded state, but the machine locked up.  It was kind  
of a strange lock up in that I could press enter and drop the cursor  
a line.  I could also Alt-F2 to another terminal and type in a  
username and keep hitting enter for new lines, but the machine never  
asked for the password.  On trying to reboot with just the 3  
harddrives instead of all 4, I would get a core dump immediately  
after the "Press F1 for FreeBSD" screen.  After inserting the drive  
again, the drive is labeled "Offline Member" on the RAID BIOS screen  
and the OS still core dumps right after the "F1  FreeBSD" screen.

I'm guessing that this is just a lack of support for this controller,  
and since its Intel, it probably won't improve anytime soon.  Are  
there any recommended SATA-II RAID controllers that I could buy and  
put in here that would give me full RAID functionality?

jorj