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Date:      Tue, 02 May 2006 21:08:10 +0300
From:      Toomas Aas <toomas.aas@raad.tartu.ee>
To:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Intel SE7520BD2 motherboard
Message-ID:  <20060502210810.rwy4yfg6s8k80c8k@webmail.raad.tartu.ee>

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Hello!

Some friends of mine are looking to buy a new server hardware based on =20
Intel SE7520BD2 motherboard for their FreeBSD server (6.0 or whatever =20
is the latest release in a month or two). The plan is to use two =20
mirrored SCSI disks as main storage and one (S)ATA disk for backups. =20
Two LAN connections are necessary.

I've been trying to figure out how well all the integrated features of =20
this motherboard are supported by FreeBSD. So far, these are my findings

- SCSI/RAID controller: LSI1030 - explicitly noted in hardware notes, =20
also I'm running one of these with FreeBSD 5.4 right now so this =20
should be OK;

- First integrated NIC: Intel 82541PI - explicitly noted in hardware =20
notes, so should be OK;

- Second integrated NIC: Marvell Yukon EC88E8050 - nothing about this =20
in hardware notes, but a binary FreeBSD 6 driver can be downloaded =20
from Marvell's website. I have no experience using third-party binary =20
drivers with FreeBSD, so I'm a bit hesitant here. If I get this driver =20
working with FreeBSD 6.0, can I expect it to still work with 6.1, 6.2, =20
etc? Given the usual warnings how kernel and userland must be kept in =20
sync when upgrading, I think this is even more true about kernel and =20
modules. Am I possibly commiting myself to running an outdated 6.x =20
release by using this third-party binary driver?

- Intel ICH5R SATA controller. Also not explicitly noted in hardware =20
notes, at least not in 'Disk controllers' section. Couldn't find =20
anything definitive by googling. I'm not interested in possible RAID =20
features, would it work if I just connected a single SATA disk to this =20
controller?

Overall, would you recommend this motherboard for running FreeBSD 6?

Thanks in advance for any feedback.
--=20
Toomas Aas



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