Installing FreeBSD with hw SATA RAID-1

[Alex Zbyslaw]

Erik Norgaard wrote:

> Alex Zbyslaw wrote:
>
>> If the controller is supported, then it should "just work", but 
>> unless there is a CLI which works for FreeBSD then you won't be able 
>> to do things like rebuild the RAID from within FreeBSD, only from its 
>> BIOS.
>>
>> It looks like the controller is supported by the aac driver so check 
>> the manpage for that.  It answers your last question ;-)
>
>
> Thanks, yes, it seems like it "just works" :) but I can't find any CLI 
> to manage it, the man-page for aac doesn't refer to one such and 
> atacontrol doesn't work :( are there other CLI's?

I thought the manpage referred to "linux management utilities" or some 
such.  This is from 5.4

>      The /dev/aac? device nodes provide access to the management 
> interface of
>      the controller.  One node exists per installed card.  The aliases
>      /dev/afa? and /dev/hpn? exist for compatibilty with the Dell and 
> HP ver-
>      sions of management tools, respectively.  If the kernel is 
> compiled with
>      the COMPAT_LINUX option, or the aac_linux.ko and linux.ko modules are
>      loaded, the Linux-compatible ioctl(2) interface for the 
> management device
>      will be enabled and will allow Linux-based management applications to
>      control the card.

So whatever utilities Dell(?) provide should work.  You should be able 
to find those on the manufacturer's website and maybe even in the ports.

cd /usr/ports && make search name=aac

finds this:

> Port:   aaccli-1.0
> Path:   /usr/ports/sysutils/aaccli
> Info:   Adaptec SCSI RAID administration tool
> Maint:  bms at FreeBSD.org
> B-deps:
> R-deps:
> WWW:    http://support.dell.com/


which looks like what you want.

--Alex