From owner-freebsd-current  Wed Nov  8  9:19:36 2000
Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Received: from freebsd.dk (freebsd.dk [212.242.42.178])
	by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP
	id AEEC137B4C5; Wed,  8 Nov 2000 09:19:31 -0800 (PST)
Received: (from sos@localhost)
	by freebsd.dk (8.9.3/8.9.1) id SAA36369;
	Wed, 8 Nov 2000 18:19:59 +0100 (CET)
	(envelope-from sos)
From: Soren Schmidt <sos@freebsd.dk>
Message-Id: <200011081719.SAA36369@freebsd.dk>
Subject: Re: HPT370 RAID - booting
In-Reply-To: <NEBBLGGDMLOMBLNHDFHFMEDGCAAA.debnar@o-c.sk> from "[Ivan Debn_r]" at "Nov 8, 2000 05:15:09 pm"
To: debnar@o-c.sk ([Ivan Debn_r])
Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2000 18:19:59 +0100 (CET)
Cc: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL54 (25)]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG
Precedence: bulk
X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG

It seems [Ivan Debn_r] wrote:
> I'm just looking at the disk partitions, and the first 63 sectors are by
> default marked as unused. So is it really nescessary to have the ofset in
> the ar driver for HPT?
> 
> I would prefer to have the requirement to not to use dangerously dedicated,
> but be able to boot the drive and install on it as a normal one.

Well, for all I care it can be changed, and I put a note in there to
mail you when users have RAID's that suddenly disappear :) 
Seriously I'm tempted to have a chat with HighPoint if they could 
maybe change this to use a setup like Promise do....

> Correct me if I'm wrong, but in RAID1 it is essential to be able to take one
> of the drives and boot from it almost as if it was singe simple disk.
> How does the driver handles situation when there is one of the mirror drives
> broken or missing ?

The driver doesnt handle that, its up to the BIOS for now.

> Is it possible to query the driver to check, if the drives are OK from the
> userland ?

No, again the BIOS is to be used for now, if the RAID is broken it wont
be configured in the driver.

This might change in the (not too distant) future, but for now this is
all there is, but I thought this feature was essential enough to put
it in as is.

On the bright side remember that FreeBSD is the only free OS that has
support for these ATA RAID cards and tagged queueing, but I only
have this much spare time to do it.....

-Søren


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message