Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2011 14:11:48 +0000 From: "b. f." <bf1783@googlemail.com> To: Ilya Kazakevich <kazakevichilya@gmail.com>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Booting from firmware RAID Message-ID: <AANLkTinn3Jmu7KX8Ggfs0LpaTsmpJJAweENbMxuw1pnm@mail.gmail.com>
next in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> This is probably more PC-specific than freebsd-specific question. I have > intel firmware raid. OS needs drivers to work with it. FreeBSD sees it as > ar0, so it has drivers. > But I want my OS to be installed on this drive and boot from it. It is not > good idea, but I really want to do it:) > Is it possible? > > boot0 and boot1 both work with HDD via BIOS interrupts and CHS, right? So, > how do they know how to access RAID? They has no drivers. > Or BIOS supports interrupts to access RAID with out of drivers? If so -- > what for drivers are needed? To access drive via ATA interface? > > Is it possible to boot freebsd from "firmware raid"? Sometimes: it depends on the firmware, and your bios. I had a add-in PCIe SATA RAID controller based on a Marvell SE9128 chipset, and using a Marvell firmware. The bios and the FreeBSD 9-CURRENT bootloader were able to boot from a JBOD drive attached to the controller, up until the point where the ahci driver tried to take control of the drive. Then the Marvell firmware presented a fictitious configuration to the ahci driver and returned invalid device signatures, so the boot process failed. On the same machine, however, I was able to boot without problems from a JBOD drive attached to a PCI-X SATA RAID controller based on the Silicon Image SiI3124 chipset, using a Silicon Image firmware. b.
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?AANLkTinn3Jmu7KX8Ggfs0LpaTsmpJJAweENbMxuw1pnm>