[nycbug-talk] highpoint RAID drivers on FreeBSD

[Isaac Levy]

Hi all, from the cool, cheap, and expendable hardware dept.,

A vendor just built me a box with a SATA RAID card which is new to me-  
and I have a fairly strange question for everyone, as I don't know  
where to go from here.

I need to find out how one goes about getting a hardware driver into  
the FreeBSD source- and having never been involved with that before, I  
don't know who/where to turn to.  This is the course of action I think  
is appropriate, after thinking through the everything detailed below.

The nutshell version, the HighPoint has FreeBSD drivers for their 1640  
SATA RAID card on their website, it's just the installing disk drivers  
on boot volumes that bites.  These things are cheap, solid, SATA RAID-  
who doesn't want that? (regardless if I want it, I've now got one :)

If anyone can point me to the right person, or URL, I'd seriously  
appreciate it- this situation is right on the cusp of being VERY cool,  
IMHO.

Details below- Rocket-
.ike




Details:
--
((SPECS))
The Raid card is the 'HighPoint RocketRaid 1640'
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/rr1640.htm

It's a 4 channel SATA card, and they're fairly inexpensive.  With that,  
HighPoint actually states FreeBSD support on their website, PROVIDES  
DRIVERS, and both 'CLI' and 'GUI' management tools- all fine and dandy  
(they can't be any clunkier than aaccli eh?).  Right now the card  
hovers around $100- very accessible, very replaceable.


(( DRIVERS EXIST!! ))
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/bios_rr1640.htm#FreeBSD
There is online access to the card's drivers from the manufacturer, and  
they have actually gone to considerable effort to support FreeBSD  
through 4.x and 5.x (as well as Linux), though I have not yet seen any  
clear license concerning driver redistribution etc... (excepting a  
general copyright header in the manual), so I'd assume that with a  
little prodding even, HighPoint could be convinced to slap an MIT or  
BSD style license in there, so we can have the open inclusion of the  
driver or source in *BSD/*NIX source.  Someone within FreeBSD may have  
tried this already and failed, but I haven't been able to find anything  
about this online.


(( HOW INSTALLING DISK DRIVERS ON BOOT MEDIA BITES ))
Installing the drivers, ESPECIALLY during a system install, is a real  
manual pain in the tail.  The instructions provided by HighPoint call  
for a sequence involving:
+ booting from FreeBSD install CD
- pausing before the kernel loads
- loading the driver off a floppy
+ One then proceeds with a standard FreeBSD install
- and at the end, one has to instal the HighPoint drivers on the fresh  
system
- Then one manually has to add the driver to boot.load on the fresh  
system, so it bloody loads at boot time.

The install sequence is documented in a PDF, in the tarball of stuff  
that comes with the driver images:
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/BIOS%20+%20Driver/rr1640/FreeBSD/rr154x- 
bsd-v112s.tgz

(( WHY DRIVER INSTALL BITES ))
Driver install takes a inordinate amount of time, (hardware RAID being  
something I use, for one, because it SAVES me time).  In addition, I  
have no floppy on this system- and don't plan to install one, so  
getting this to work involved a 3rd disk, then copying the install, and  
driver, etc... to the RAID once it was working.  Now, thinking foreword  
to a time when there is some sort of critical problem with the system,  
I shudder to think what kind of boot-ballet I'll have to deal with,  
should I need to boot from emergency repair media- seeing as whenever  
that kind of thing happens, it's always under time pressure, anything  
that can go wrong will go wrong.
I could create my own install/repair CD's based on the minidist  
releases, but this is a loosing proposition as well- seeing as I  
currently will be supporting 1 of these buggers, and what the heck  
happens when there is some Zero-day system exploit, where I'll need to  
do some major upgrades within hours.


(( WHY DRIVERS INCLUSION FOR SOURCE/INSTALLER MEDIA SOLVES EVERYTHING ))
It's simple- All of the above install issues for boot volumes disappear  
for this card.
IMHO, this enables all of us to use fast and inexpensive RAID in places  
that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive (slap RAID in that little dev  
box in your closet).  I'd personally start using the cards all over in  
clusters of redundant servers, where fast/cheap replacements are key  
for me...

For advocacy purposes, this is the kind of situation that I think  
creates bad perceptions about Open Source- and BSD- HighPoint folks  
really are putting effort into supporting FreeBSD, but I'd hate to be a  
newbie who just bought a HighPoint card for my first FreeBSD install!!!