SATA on FreeBSD-4.x

[Rumen Telbizov]

On Sat, May 15, 2004 at 05:22:31AM -0700, Dan Strick wrote:
> On Sat, 15 May 2004 14:01:45 +0300, Rumen Telbizov wrote:
> >>
> > I am running 2 server with serial ata controllers
> > (HighPoint and a builtin one) and so far I had NO problems
> > at all! HighPoint seem to be very stable (after a bios update)
> > and quite fast! My OS is FreeBSD 4.9 (and 4.10-PRERELEASE).
> >>
> 
> Which HighPoint card are you using?  (There are several different
> models.)

- RocketRAID 154x/1640 S-ATA Controller driver Version 1.11s
- chipset hpt374

> 
> Are you using the standard FreeBSD 4.9/4.10 ATA driver or perhaps
> something from HighPoint?

Drivers for FreeBSD are provided from the HighPoint.
I downloaded the driver (kernel module) from the
HighPoint site!

from kldstat:
 2    1 0xc04e3000 1f750    hpt374.ko


> 
> Can you boot off your HighPoint card?
Sure I can! But ...


The default BIOS of the RAID controler
was for ATA (PATA) and not for SATA (stupid isn't it!?).
I wasted 5 hours trying to find out what was wrong, until
I finaly decided to take the final BIOS from the site
and flash my card. After this everything was fine.

It was interesting that I could successfuly install FreeBSD 
on the RAID (even with the old BIOS), but the OS could
not BOOT after install.

Another sympthom was that when I was browsing in the BIOS
of the card there REALLY WERE Master and Slave drives
on every controller (there are 4 controlers on the card).
This was another thing that made me think that the BIOS
was NOT for this SERIAL ATA controler!!!!

After flashing the BIOS of the card - only 1 disk
was visible on each controler.

One last thing: just for your information - I am 
running RAID 1 (for 1 month) without any problems.
The card supports hardware raid that could be re/build
with sysctl commands. Example of viewing the status
of the card:

# sysctl hpt374.status
hpt374.status: RocketRAID 154x/1640 S-ATA Controller driver Version 1.11s

Physical device list
Controller/Bus/ID  Model                Capacity  Status   Array
-------------------------------------------------------------------
1 Channel 1        ST3160023AS           152627MB  Normal   RAID1
1 Channel 2        ST3160023AS           152627MB  Normal   RAID1

Logical device list
No. Type         Name                 Capacity  Status            OsDisk
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1  RAID 1       RAID1                 152627MB  Normal            da0


That's it. If you want more information I'd gladly provide it 
to you!

Rumen Telbizov

P.S.
The configuration directive for loading the kernel module
(hpt374_load="YES" ) was put 
(by an installation script provided from HighPoint) in the
/boot/defaults/loader.conf file. After cvsuping, mergemaster
removed it from the file, and I finally I had to put it
into /boot/loader.conf. Maybe someone should tell those
guys to put the directive into the right place!