Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 02:43:38 -0500 From: Sulejmen Mehmedagic <smx624@gmail.com> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Confused about SATA Raid Message-ID: <43043C2A.4030802@gmail.com>
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I am not sure if you are still having this problem, but maybe somebody
else will be able to use the following:
I am using SuperMicro server with Intel ICH5 SATA 150 controller and
FreeBSD 5.4. As far as I could tell, the trick with SATA RAID is to
disable/delete RAID in the Intel (after-BIOS) utility, perform one quick
(because you are going to destroy it anyway) FreeBSD installation, log
in, and then use the atacontrol utility to create RAID, which you
already did, according to your post.
After that, you boot from the installation CD-ROM once more, and perform
final installation ("final" meaning that you should use the time to
customize it, if necessary). This time, however, you will see ar0 in the
list of available drives. Choose that one and continue with the
installation. As far as the installation, I always choose Standard
(recommended) type at the beginning. However, and I am not 100% sure
about this, I think that you could benefit from choosing FreeBSD Boot
Manager, when it comes to that screen (so not the Standard Boot Manager,
which is selected by default); more about that later.
After looking through several lists I stumbled upon atacontrol utility
and afterwards using man pages I was able to do the work I described
above. However, I was not satisfied completely, since I had trouble not
with removing one drive and booting (the system would boot with only one
drive), but after "replacing" (basically inserting the one I just
removed to mimic drive replacement) that drive back and trying to boot
again (from this you can see that I remove and add drives only when the
computer is turned off, if it matters to you or anybody else). At that
time, I also was not using FreeBSD Boot Manager.
After couple of weeks, I found this article
(http://www.techno-obscura.com/~delgado/notes/fbsd-ich5SATAraid.html),
which describes the process in similar and more detailed fashion. This
gave me hope to try one more time and then it was a success. Using
atacontrol utility and its options (attach, detach, addspare, and
rebuild) I was able to successfully "replace" both drives and each time
rebuild the RAID.
The only glitch was in the case when I placed back the second drive,
i.e. ad6 (which somehow might be the main one) into the server and tried
to boot. There was a panic message and the server rebooted after couple
of seconds. Next time, using FreeBSD Boot Manager, I clicked F5 and OS
booted from a different drive. After logging in, I was again able to
rebuild the RAID.
Sulejmen
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