raid1

[Hexren]

> On Feb 19, 2005, at 6:39 PM, Spades wrote:

>> How do we check if FreeBSD recorgnises it as individual drives or 
>> Hardware RAID array.

> Your raid chip appears to  be a software ATA raid.  man ata

> The raid appears as arN according to man ata

> look in the dmesg   to see what happened at boot -- this will tell you 
> how the controller and drives were found by FreeBSD

> /var/run/dmesg.boot

> Chad

>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC" 
>> <chad at shire.net>
>> To: "Sandy Rutherford" <sandy at krvarr.bc.ca>
>> Cc: <freebsd-questions at freebsd.org>; "Spades" <spades at galaxynet.org>
>> Sent: Saturday, February 19, 2005 5:46 PM
>> Subject: Re: raid1
>>
>>
>>
>> On Feb 19, 2005, at 12:37 AM, Sandy Rutherford wrote:
>>
>>>>>>>> On Fri, 18 Feb 2005 23:51:53 -0700,
>>>>>>>> "Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC" <chad at shire.net> said:
>>>
>>>> On Feb 18, 2005, at 11:39 PM, Spades wrote:
>>>
>>>>> hi, my server hardware supports hardware raid, i installed it
>>>>> as per normal freebsd 5.3, however i see no difference
>>>>> in df. its using 2 x 160GB, what do i do during the installation
>>>>> to enable the raid?
>>>>>
>>>>> mobo:
>>>>> http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon800/E7320/X6DVL-
>>>>> EG.cfm
>>>>>
>>>>> -bash-2.05b$ df
>>>>> Filesystem  1K-blocks   Used    Avail Capacity  Mounted on
>>>>> /dev/ad4s1a  66008394  35424 60692300     0%    /
>>>>> devfs               1      1        0   100%    /dev
>>>>> ...
>>>
>>>> What do you expect to see?
>>>
>>>> A raid1 is a mirror set and to the OS would probably look like a 
>>>> single
>>>> drive if it truly is a HW raid
>>>
>>> This should be true of any hardware RAID level, not just RAID1.  The
>>> HW RAID presents logical drives to the OS, which look like real drives
>>> to it.  The caveat is that the RAID driver will appear as the disk
>>> type.  I don't have any experience with SATA RAID, but on my server,
>>> which has a Mylex ExtremeRAID 1100 SCSI RAID card, a df gives:
>>>
>>> Filesystem              1K-blocks    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
>>> /dev/mlxd0s1a           ...
>>> /dev/mlxd0s1d           ...
>>> /dev/mlxd0s1h           ...
>>> /dev/mlxd0s1e           ...
>>> /dev/mlxd0s1f           ...
>>> /dev/mlxd0s1g           ...
>>> /dev/mlxd1s1e           ...
>>> /dev/mlxd1s1f           ...
>>> /dev/mlxd1s1g           ...
>>> /dev/mlxd2s1e           ...
>>>
>>> mlx(4) is the driver for this card.  The underlying hard drive
>>> structure doesn't look anything like the above, but this is irrelevant
>>> to the OS.
>>>
>>> Regarding your situation, I believe that your MB uses an Adaptec SATA
>>> controller.  You should find out exactly what the controller is and if
>>> it is supported in "Hardware Notes".  I would expect that if your
>>> controller is supported and found, then "ad" should be replaced by the
>>> relevant driver.  Also, have a look at the dmesg output.  There should
>>> be some sign that the OS is recognizing your RAID controller.
>>>
>>
>> According to the MB specs at the URL given by the OP, the SATA is an
>> Intel 6300ESB (part of a more general IO chip)
>>
>> " • 6300ESB (Hance Rapids) SATA Controller (2x Drive support)
>> • 2x SATA Ports
>> • RAID 0, 1, JBOD support"
>>
>>
>> I don't see any specific mention of this in any of the HW notes for
>> 5.3.  I would be interested to see the dmesg output at boot time to see
>> what the system sees for devices and controllers.  If it is an ATA raid
>> (pseudo HW RAID) then it would show as arX devices and not adX
>> according to the handbook.
>>
>> Chad
>>

---------------------------------------------

Concerning that chip I've found these
http://www.ambrisko.com/doug/ata/
in some mails to freebsd-current. Right now I am in the proces of
patching my system with these to see iif that does the trick of
supporting Raid.

Regards Hexren

btw:
The post from freebsd-current
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2004-September/038025.html
googling for "6300esb freebsd site:freebsd.org" turns up some more
posts.