FreeBSD 8.3-R sysinstall does not "see" disks that are recognized during boot

[Ian Smith]

On Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:17:31 -0400 (EDT), Andy Dills wrote:
 > On Wed, 18 Apr 2012, Harris, James R wrote:
 > > 
 > > Andy and I worked this out offline - workaround was to go to 
 > > Options|Re-scan which caused the devices to show up in the sysinstall 
 > > menu.  I'm adding details here for future reference.
 > > 
 > > 1) C60x chipsets have the 6 traditional SATA ports, plus 4 or 8 SAS 
 > > ports.  Only the latter are controlled by the isci(4) driver.
 > > 2) The IDE/AHCI/RAID modes apply only to the traditional SATA ports.
 > > 3) In Andy's case, going to Options|Re-scan Devices caused the disks to 
 > > show up.  This problem seems to be system or platform-dependent, as I 
 > > was not able to reproduce with 8.3 memstick image on my C600 systems.
 > > 4) There was a problem with initial device scan using isci(4) on 
 > > 7-STABLE, which necessitated r233371.  This was MFC'd back to 8-STABLE, 
 > > but after 8.3 was released.  I'm fairly convinced this is the root cause 
 > > of Andy's problem, but don't have any easy way to verify.
 > 
 > First, I want to thank James and the other responders for help getting me 
 > squared away.
 > 
 > Something that may be of specific use for others (James has covered the 
 > most relevant points...at blazing speed, what an asset to the community), 
 > is that the isci support in 8.3-R will now enable FreeBSD compatibility 
 > with most of the new Supermicro server platforms. 
 > 
 > And a new lesson was learned....first thing to try when sysinstall fails 
 > to recognize hardware is to re-scan devices. Never needed that across 
 > thousands of installs (dating to 2.2.8), and didn't even know it existed.

Yes.  This same thing happen{s,ed} in sysinstall with memstick installs 
- and perhaps other SCSI over USB devices? - with some sticks and/or on 
some boxes; in particular after happily booting into sysinstall from a 
memstick, then not finding the same daX thereafter to install from.

Bruce Cran added a message to the 'No disks found' dialog suggesting 
trying Options/Rescan Devices, which 'solved' the problem for that then 
quite commonly reported problem, for 8.1-R or so.  Apparently the dialog 
message was only updated specifically for USB-based da devices ..

cheers, Ian