Adaptec's raidutil (asr-utils), 2010S and 5.2

[Scott Long]

On Tue, 27 Jan 2004, Kris Gale wrote:
> If this question is better asked on a different list, just let me know.
>
> I'm using an Adaptec 2010S (0-Channel RAID) with raidutil (part of
> ports/sysutils/asr-utils).  On all of my 4.x machines, it works just fine.
>  However, I've recently purchased a couple of new servers (all the same
> hardware), and decided to give 5.2 a try.  (Actually, I'm running -CURRENT
> as of 1/23/04)
>
> In order to get it to run, I had to create a symlink in /dev/ from rasr0
> to dptr17.  After doing this, it appears to run properly, but is unable to
> get any data off of the Adaptec card.
>
> Did something change in FreeBSD 5 that would have broken this tool?  It

The asr driver and asr userland tools do a lot of horribly wrong
things that were never meant to work, let alone guaranteed to work.
The driver used to do a lot of digging around in kernel internals (and
ignoring the proper APIs to do the corret things) that might not work
any more.  The userland aps have special knowledge of how the driver
does it's digging, and those assumptions might not be true anymore also.
The 'symlink trick' that youy describe is a good example of having to deal
with one of these problems.

In any case, the source code to the asr command line tool and
communications back-end (called the 'Engine') is available from Adaptec's
website.  It is certainly possible to fix these and the asr driver to work
properly, but it is a significant task that isn't terribly rewarding.  I
know some people (myself included) that might be willing to do it under
contract.

> seems like others are making this tool work under 5.1, based on the advice
> I found old mailing list posts that suggested making that symlink in
> /dev/.  Maybe this problem is specific to the 2010S.
>

The particular model of hardware has little to do with the problems
inherent in the software.

Scott