Easier way to install on 3ware 9550 card?

[Tom Judge]

Dan Mahoney, System Admin wrote:
> Hey all,
> 
> I have a new system with NO FLOPPY CONTROLLER and a 3ware 9550 card.  
> It's a 1u system -- sticking extra things into PCI slots as a workaround 
> is likely to be impossible.
> 
> I found this document on how to get it installed, in theory:
> 
> http://www.3ware.com/kb/article.aspx?id=14850
> 
> But with no floppy, this is probably going to involve either 
> transplanting the card (and drive array) to another machine JUST to do 
> the install (translated: a serious pain in the ass).
> 
> If someone could explain why any of the following aren't possible, I'd 
> love to know:
> 
> 1) Making this driver part of the boot-time probe.  I can understand not 
> including every SOUND CARD and MULTI-PORT SERIAL CARD in the generic 
> kernel, but could we at least include the rest of the STORAGE modules?
> 
> 2) Giving the ability to load a kernel module from somewhere else (an 
> http/ftp url, maybe?)
> 
> 3) Adding the kldload command to the emergency holographic shell (I was 
> able to do an NFS mount from within it, but had no way to load the driver).
> 
> 4) Allowing non-standard modules to reside on the CD, instead of loading 
> from floppy (i.e. I see there's a twa module in the base system, why 
> aren't the .ko's sitting around easily-accessible for sysinstall?)
> 
> If I'm missing some really obvious way of doing this, please let me know.
> 

Hi Dan,

I have installed FreeBSD on several systems with 9550 controllers.  The 
driver is available in sysinstall from 6.1 Release. (I installed from a 
6.1 Release CD)

Hope that helps

Tom