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Date:      Thu, 21 Apr 2011 10:31:56 -0700
From:      Garrett Cooper <yanegomi@gmail.com>
To:        Alexander Motin <mav@FreeBSD.org>
Cc:        FreeBSD-Current <freebsd-current@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Switch from legacy ata(4) to CAM-based ATA
Message-ID:  <5998CCDE-CA96-4C37-8C03-3CC283DBB099@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <4DAEAE1B.70207@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <4DAEAE1B.70207@FreeBSD.org>

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On Apr 20, 2011, at 2:57 AM, Alexander Motin <mav@FreeBSD.org> wrote:

> Hi.
>=20
> With 9.0 release approaching quickly, I believe it the best time now to
> manage migration from legacy ata(4) ATA to the new CAM-based one. New
> ATA code present in the tree for more then a year now, used by many
> people and proved it's superior functionality and reliability. The only
> major issue with it now is the migration process. Sooner or later we
> have to pass it, but due to major UI and API changes we can't do it
> after 9.0 release. So I propose to do it the next Sunday (April 24) to
> have as much time for troubleshooting as possible.
>=20
> I have prepared the following patch to do it:
> http://people.freebsd.org/~mav/ata_switch.patch
>=20
> I haven't added geom_raid to the kernel configurations because we have
> no other GEOM classes there. But tell me if you thing I should.
>=20
> If somebody has any problems with new ATA stack, please repeat your
> tests with latest HEAD code and contact me if problem is still there.
> Next three weeks before BSDCan I am going to dedicate to fixing possibly

Although this may not be a list of fixable issues, here are some observation=
s (in part with the new geom raid infrastructure):
1. Channels are no longer fixed of course because ata uses cam now, and I be=
lieve that device numbering is done based on probe ordering. This is fun to w=
ork with when dealing with appliances or configurations that require determi=
nistic probe and mount, especially when drives fail, go missing, etc, but ca=
n be hacked around in device.hints. This is why it would be nice for geom la=
bels to work in a sane manner.
2. When testing with USB thumb drives on 7.x with a custom kernel / sourceba=
se, it was enumerating the thumbdrive as da0, the first sata drive as ada1, e=
tc. This may not be true for vanilla FreeBSD or later versions of FreeBSD.
3. Directly mappable analogs between atacontrol and camcontrol don't exist i=
n areas; I'll come up with a laundry list for this because I said I would ea=
rlier via private email.
4. IIRC atacontrol and graid status reported different sets of raid volume s=
tates, depending on the underlying controller, in particular they changed th=
e textual name for "healthy" from "optimal" to "ready" somewhere around the I=
CH7/8/9 era.
Thanks again for all your hard work!
-Garrett=



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