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

[Scott Long]

On Tue, 27 Jan 2004, John Von Essen wrote:
> 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"?

Apparently it hasn't been enough of an itch for people to scratch.  I did
all of the AAC work for two reasons: 1) I think that the AAC architecure
and products are superior to ASR in practically every respect (as is
witnessed by market pressures forcing Adaptec to abandon ASR and stick
with AAC), 2) Adaptec believed that FreeBSD support for AAC was important
enough that I was able to justify working on it as part of my normal job.

I have no justification to work on ASR during paid hours, and it doesn't
interest me enough to work on it in my free time.  I and others here in
my office feel somewhat guilty that the ASR code has languished so much,
but it really is beyond our means to do more with it.  If it was
just a matter of fixing a few bugs, it would be a different
matter.  Unfortunately, making the ASR driver and tools work well
requires more than just a few hours of random work.  However, all of the
source is available for someone to pick up and run with.

Scott


>
>
> -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
> > _______________________________________________
> > freebsd-scsi at freebsd.org mailing list
> > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-scsi
> > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-scsi-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
> >
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-scsi at freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-scsi
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-scsi-unsubscribe at freebsd.org"
>
>