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

[John Von Essen]

Since most poeple use FreeBSD as a server platform, and most servers use
RAID, and most RAID is done with the Apadtec cards....

Is there a reason why there is no interest in fixing these
supposedly "wrong" things? Or is the intention to focus solely on the aac
driver and support the newer U320 raid cards under the aac driver -
which does things "correctly"?


-john

On Tue, 27 Jan 2004, Scott Long wrote:

> 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
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