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

[Kris Gale]

> 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.

I disagree that it's not in Adaptec's interests.  I've based my whole
network around SuperMicro servers that support the ASR-based 0-channel
RAID cards, because they were supported and had a command-line tool
available on FreeBSD 4.x systems.  Since I know I'm going to need KSE and
other features of 5.x, this is a huge problem for me.  I know I'm not
alone in this.

I just purchased 28 new servers, all with ASR-based 0-channel RAID cards,
with the intention of installing 5-CURRENT on all of them.  D'oh.  Even if
I move to different hardware (and therefore a different CLI), I already
have many monitoring and alert systems built around raidutil that I'd have
to rewrite or modify.  It also eliminates many of the primary reasons I
buy those SuperMicro systems, with their neat, pre-run, custom cables,
integrated SCSI controllers, etc.

I'm sure there's more people on this list in a similar bind, so can you
make any suggestions about who we can contact at Adaptec to let them know
that we really do use this hardware, and that we do indeed purchase it
based on the availability of the configuration/monitoring CLI?

I really wish I could take you up on the suggestion that someone run with
the existing source code, but I'm much more of a perl guy than a C hacker.

Kris