System freeze: Adaptec (aac) timeouts (releng 8)

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 09:36:43AM +0800, Adrian Chadd wrote:
> On 15 September 2011 00:38, Elliot Finley <efinley.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I was having the exact same problem using an Adaptec 52445. ?After
> > downloading and using the latest driver from the adaptec website, the
> > problems stopped. ?I haven't had a single freeze since using the new
> > code. ?The newest driver from the website has source code with it, so
> > it shouldn't be that big of a deal to incorporate it into the base
> > system. ? ?I emailed the authors of the aac driver (Mike Smith and
> > Scott Long), but they have both retired. ?So I'm not really sure how
> > to get this code into the base. ?If anyone knows, please take up the
> > charge.
> 
> File a PR and hound people on freebsd-current until it gets done?

...which will either be ignored given that (TMK) nobody is maintaining
the Adaptec drivers, or will be addressed in HEAD which won't help the
OP who runs RELENG_8 until an MFC happens -- and if it happens (I forget
how MFC approvals work).  :-)

As for the lack of aac(4) maintainer, I'm not sure how this should be
addressed in the aac(4) man page.  AUTHORS tends to indicate the names
of the people who created or were involved in creating/maintaining said
driver, which is sometimes (but on FreeBSD hardly always) the
individual(s) who currently support it.  In the case that there is a
different maintainer, how does this get denoted in the man page?

I'm actually very surprised to hear there's an official FreeBSD driver
on Adaptec's site that's actually intended for FreeBSD 8.x.  Last I knew
they had basically blown off FreeBSD support.  I wonder who at Adaptec
is responsible for the FreeBSD driver?  It would be good to know to
involve them in all communiqués.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                   Mountain View, CA, US |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.               PGP 4BD6C0CB |