Re: ICH5R SATA RAID?

On Thu, Apr 08, 2004 at 08:52:33 -0700, Doug Ambrisko wrote:
> Kenneth D. Merry writes:
> | On Wed, Apr 07, 2004 at 07:15:09 -0700, Doug Ambrisko wrote:
> | > Kenneth D. Merry writes:
> | > | On Tue, Apr 06, 2004 at 20:29:10 -0700, Doug Ambrisko wrote:
> | > | > I have a SuperMicro system that does the Intel "ICH5-R" RAID.
> | > | > I should get inspired via the Linux code and see if I can add
> | > | > that.  So far I've haved setup the RAID but have turned on the ICH
> | > | > flag.
> | > | 
> | > | Adaptec HostRAID is software RAID.  By software RAID, I mean that you only
> | > | get BIOS support from the card for booting, and after that all of the RAID
> | > | functionality is handled via the host OS.
> | > | 
> | > | Some of their SCSI controllers include HostRAID support.  e.g.:
> | > | 
> | > | http://www.adaptec.com/worldwide/product/proddetail.html?sess=no&language=English+US&prodkey=ASC-39320A-R&cat=%2fTechnology%2fUltra320%2fNew+Ultra320+SCSI!
> | > 
> | > The ICH stuff is not SCSI.  There was no mention of Adaptec in the
> | > manual for this motherboard.  There were other SuperMicro boards that
> | > had SCSI controllers on them but this one and the one I have do not.
> | > They just have SATA ports that can do RAID.
> | 
> | True, it is SATA, not SCSI.  But the concept, and some of the software, is
> | the same.  It's pretty common in OEM deals for the actual vendor of the
> | software/hardware to remain unknown.  From what it looks like, the RAID
> | functionality is all in software, as opposed to running on a chip embedded
> | in the ICH5.
> 
> I have working code to read the Intel ICH RAID meta data.  I can boot 
> a FreeBSD root partition off a stripe.  I looked at your page and it was 
> difficult to see the actual meta data definition.  I might have missed
> it since I was looking at the patch as a patch it didn't look the same at 
> all.  Do you have a non-patch version of the meta data definition?

Since that part of the patch is just a whole file, you could probably run
it through patch to get it out.  You might want to grab the tarball off of
Justin's web page, though.  He's got up to date structure definitions for
both ASR metadata and Dell DDF metadata in his tarball:

http://people.freebsd.org/~gibbs/linux/SRC/emd-0.8.0-tar.gz

You're probably looking for md_metadata_adaptec.h.  (Which is the same
metadata format used by the Adaptec controllers that use the 'asr' driver.)

> Now I need to code up the "write out" of the configuration.  Currently I just
> use the configuration created by the BIOS.
> 
> I should have this done today then I need to test failure modes.

Both the emd tarball above and the patch from my web page include support
for writing ASR metadata.  That's probably mostly useful just to see how
they update individual fields, what the format is, etc.

Ken
-- 
Kenneth Merry
ken_at_FreeBSD.ORG