Netcell SyncRaid SR3000/SR5000 FreeBSD

[Dean Hamstead]

can you get it running on another system? then just
dd the drive to an image, copy it someplace then mount
it and extract the data.

if its really ancient, why are you running it on a
really brand new piece of hardware? hence my assumption
you just want data off it.

old scsi raid cards with better support are dirt cheap
on ebay. mylex's etc got for ~au$30 and do hardware scsi
(not sure which scsi level).

Dean

Jonathan Gilpin wrote:
> Hi've aquired a Netcell sync raid card and I've tried to install FreeBSD 
> 5.4 on it.
> Its the amd64 branch. When the machine boots I get errors like this:
> 
> Failure - SETFEATURES SET TRANSFER  timed out
> 
> The raid array does appear to be detected however when I use the fisk
> utility durring the installation it complains about the drive geometry.
> 
> FreeBSD detects:  Cyl/Hd/Sect 94415/255/63
> 
> The utility suggests using 911534/104/16 I agree to this and it then says
> that this suggest geometry is invalid. I continue and when it comes to
> make the new file system it gives the time out errors above and then 
> complains
> it cannot write to the disk.
> 
> Communication with Netcell produced the following:
> 
> "I wanted to give you an update about the drive geometry value question.
> I spoke with our CTO today, and he indicates that drive geometry values
> are an old style of extremely low level calls to the hard drive that are
> no longer used by most modern operating systems, who now generally use
> LBA addressing. If FreeBSD is trying to make drive geometry calls
> through the generic hard drive driver to our card, we will be unable to
> translate them appropriately. If this is correct, than in order to work
> on FreeBSD we would need to write a driver that will be able to
> translate the calls appropriately, as indicated in this documentation
> about SCSI controllers
> http://www.infran.ru/TechInfo/BSD/handbook116.html.
> "
> 
> my questions...
> 
> I really need to get this card working on FreeBSD. Is there anyone on
> this list who can give me some guidence as to what information Netcell
> would need to produce this driver? Are there any coders working with 
> FreeBSD
> that would help produce this driver? Are there any work arounds or quick
> fixes that can be tried to get things working?
> 
> 
> Jonathan
> 
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-hardware at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-hardware-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
> 

-- 
WWW: http://dean.bong.com.au  LAN: http://www.bong.com.au
EMAIL: dean at bong.com.au       or       djzort at bong.com.au
ICQ: 16867613