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

[John Von Essen]

Thanks Scott, thats sort of the answer I was hoping for. Correct me if I
am wrong but the aac driver covers all U320 RAID cards that are
1-channel or higher (i.e, not including the zero channel stuff), right?


-john


On Tue, 27 Jan 2004, Scott Long wrote:

> 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
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