Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2006 07:24:36 -0500 From: "Jud" <judmarc@fastmail.fm> To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Fwd: Promise TX2200/2300 SATA RAID Controllers - New Driver/BIOS Problem Message-ID: <1141907076.25030.256207540@webmail.messagingengine.com>
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-Hardware may be a more appropriate list for this followup; the original post was sent to -questions. On Tue, 07 Mar 2006 07:53:28 -0500, "Jud" <judmarc@fastmail.fm> said: > At the beginning of February, Promise released a new BIOS (version > 2.5.0.3115) for the TX2300 and a new Windows driver (version 2.06.0.311) > for the TX2200/2300. After installing the new BIOS and driver on my > TX2300, neither the BSDINSTALLER iso from early December nor a -CURRENT > installation iso from the end of January recognize my RAID-0 array; the > two drives are seen as ad4 and ad6 rather than ar0. Prior to installing > the new BIOS and driver, the BSDINSTALLER iso did recognize the array as > ar0. > > I'm attempting a reinstall because of an unfortunate concatenation of > two hardware problems. I tried to run glxgears on my Radeon 9500 > (R300), which caused the system to freeze. After a hardware reset, I > ran into the kern/91408 bug. > > I've backed up my Win system and plan to see tonight whether atacontrol > can create ar0 for me. If not, then for the time being I will likely > reflash the BIOS and change the Win driver back to the older versions. Catch-22: atacontrol works fine to create ar0 that can be used for FreeBSD purposes, but on bootup the Promise BIOS shows the array as "Initializing" rather than "Functional." Windows boots, though the Promise WebPAM utility shows array status as "3" (couldn't find the precise meaning of "3" in WebPAM's Help, on the Promise website, or by Googling), which I'm guessing may mean initializing, some degraded level of performance, or an indication of unknown status. Remaking the RAID-0 array so it shows as "Functional" in the new BIOS breaks ar0 in FreeBSD, and it's back to where we started. Looks like going back to the older BIOS and Win driver is currently the only option to create a RAID-0 array that "just works" in FreeBSD. Another oddity: The Promise BIOS allows a stripe size of 128kB, but after running "atacontrol create raid0 250 ad4 ad6," the BIOS shows a stripe size of 64kB (the default) on bootup. Jud
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