5.3b7 and ata raid1 - how?

[Rob]

At 12:18 20/10/2004, Joao Barros wrote:

>Hi,
>
>Your problem is that the controller is an entry level RAID controller. 
>What you get with that controller is software RAID in certain 
>enviroments(Windows)
>More info here: http://www.siliconimage.com/products/sii0680.asp
>Someone had already raised this question, you can check the solution(one 
>possible) here: 
>http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2003-November/005141.html
>
>Hope that helped :)
>
>João Barros.


hi there; thanks for the quick reply.

The page from the archive states to use atacontrol to set up the raid.  If 
you check my question again, you will see that I have already tried this, 
and although after creating ar0 with atacontrol it shows "ready" to 
`atacontrol status ar0`, after a reboot it has vanished again.  There is 
definitely a lack of persistence in settings from this command now.

While I appreciate that this is a cheap, software raid card, it HAS worked 
with FreeBSD 4.10, and also with 5.2, as long as I did that initial 
`atacontrol create RAID1 ad4 ad6`, so I presume something in ata or 
atacontrol has changed recently - certainly it was very broken for 5.2.1, 
not allowing me to even boot an installation CD, so I presume there has 
been recent work in this area?

Thanks,

Rob

>Rob wrote:
>
>>Hi!
>>
>>I'm trying to set up a new machine, from 5.3b7 ISOs.  This machine has a 
>>SiL 0680 based IDE RAID1 card in it, on which I have two 80Gb Maxtor 
>>drives - ad4 and ad6.
>>
>>I have set up the mirroring in the IDE card's BIOS, however FreeBSD does 
>>not recognise the raid, instead presenting me with an installation target 
>>of ad4 or ad6.
>>
>>This was the same under 4.10, however I just installed a minimum system 
>>on ad4, ran `atacontrol create RAID1 ad4 ad6` and re-ran installation, 
>>whereupon it spotted ar0 and offered me this as an installation 
>>target.  Under 5.3b7 this is not happening:  Although `atacontrol status 
>>ar0` reports READY immediately after creating the raid, after doing this 
>>and just rebooting into the minimum system again the same command shows 
>>Device not configured.
>>
>>Is ata RAID1 therefore broken on 5.3b7 ??  This is straight off the ISOs 
>>downloaded a few days ago, so no custom options have been set, and the 
>>minimum system is just running GENERIC.
>>
>>(5.2.1 failed to work at all, causing a kernel panic immediately after 
>>detecting the 0680 when booting from the CD or an installed system.)
>>
>>Hardware is a Celeron 1GHz, M758LMRE motherboard (PC Chips?), AMI BIOS, 
>>plenty of RAM. There are TWO SiL 0680 cards present, but currently only 
>>the first has any drives attached. (This is to be a new fileserver, with 
>>multiple drives, although only the one RAID1 array is planned, for system 
>>and most important files.)
>>
>>Any assistance would be most appreciated.
>>
>>Rob O'Donnell.