From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Wed May 23 02:47:56 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2458F16A421 for ; Wed, 23 May 2007 02:47:56 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from bms@incunabulum.net) Received: from out1.smtp.messagingengine.com (out1.smtp.messagingengine.com [66.111.4.25]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DEF3413C45A for ; Wed, 23 May 2007 02:47:55 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from bms@incunabulum.net) Received: from compute1.internal (compute1.internal [10.202.2.41]) by out1.messagingengine.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 647EA220C70; Tue, 22 May 2007 22:47:55 -0400 (EDT) Received: from heartbeat1.messagingengine.com ([10.202.2.160]) by compute1.internal (MEProxy); Tue, 22 May 2007 22:47:55 -0400 X-Sasl-enc: gG0/fgEO5HjzOlp1DuKFokxSAcPZbRXx9t2lixPWndIF 1179888474 Received: from [192.168.123.18] (82-35-112-254.cable.ubr07.dals.blueyonder.co.uk [82.35.112.254]) by mail.messagingengine.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id C13AA38416; Tue, 22 May 2007 22:47:54 -0400 (EDT) Message-ID: <4653AB59.2020702@incunabulum.net> Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 03:47:53 +0100 From: "Bruce M. Simpson" User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.10 (Windows/20070221) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Daniel O'Connor References: <46535A83.5050207@incunabulum.net> <200705231108.44939.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> In-Reply-To: <200705231108.44939.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Gigabyte GA-VM900M caveats X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 23 May 2007 02:47:56 -0000 Daniel, Thanks for the affirmation that I'm not alone in this. The whole point of RAID being supported by platform firmware is to facilitate booting from it even if disks fail. Daniel O'Connor wrote: > On a somewhat related note.. > In my experience V-RAID is utter crap - if one of your disks fails in a > RAID1 array and you reboot it will give you 2 options - erase the first > part of your disk and boot, or sit and do nothing. > > When I asked my motherboard vendor about this they suggested I switch to > SATA mode (to boot off one disk) or to put another disk in and > rebuild... Not exactly good for unattended use. > Summary: Avoid VIA software RAID like the plague. The BIOS (after latest update from Gigabyte) consistently reports that duplication failed whenever I attempted to [re]create the mirror in the BIOS. Even when I tried to switch the controller to SATA mode, the second disk persisted in being undetected. I removed the primary disk entirely. The secondary disk DID get mirrored, and the BIOS attempted to boot from it; although by the time I did this I had no way of verifying if FreeBSD had mirrored the data, or if the BIOS mirrored the data. FreeBSD never sees the second disk, whether in SATA or RAID mode, and setting the array to 'bootable' in the BIOS does not help in any case. Short of manually nuking the metadata on the disks themselves, I can think of no other clean room tactics, and the supplied documentation is also useless. Yes, utter crap, and a waste of valuable time. What I plan to do tommorrow is swap the JMicron card out of my Athlon64 machine and into the new Core 2 Duo system I began building. In a way this is good because the disks I purchased support SATA-300 as does the JMicron. However, FreeBSD's support for the onboard Acer Labs SATA on that system appeared to have regressed during the 6.1->6.2 lifetime due to an AHCI issue (see thread: 6.2-RC: Problem with SATA on ASUS Vintage AH-3, on this list). [Normally I have been running 7-CURRENT on that machine, with the JMicron card, so up until now this hasn't been an issue, but this is what kicked off the whole shooting match in the first place, and I need to be able to multi-boot Windows "Longhorn" Server and Gentoo Linux for the work I'm going to be doing.] I wonder if people have had better experiences with JMicron. I am encouraged by the work Scott Long has begun, although that is going to take time to bear fruit. I can't burn too much time on this though, I needed a working server today. Regards, BMS