Re: twa driver needs updating

Daniel O'Connor wrote:
> On Sat, 20 Oct 2007, ECEG / Daniel Duerr wrote:
>> Hi Scott,
>>
>> Great perspective here, thanks for taking the time to respond.  I
>> agree with you and believe that some attention should be put on the
>> hardware vendor driver side of things.  It was *such* a pain to get
>> to the point where I could even install Freebsd on these machines.
>> And 3Ware RAID controllers are pretty standard IMHO.
>>
>> I've upgraded to RELENG_6 from RELENG_6_2 but I'm not at the data
>> center and I cannot chance a reboot with the twa driver not working
>> for me and the machine not coming back up.
> 
> It is quite trivial to modify the install disk if you have another 
> FreeBSD machine handy to build the kernel. You can just drop in the 
> module you want to /boot/kernel on the CD.
> 
> Although I agree, it would be nice if you could more easily load vendor 
> drivers.. (ie if the module overrode the kernel code)
> 

1.  Modifying the install disk is not trivial to most people, especially
ones who just want to install the damn OS and use it, not hack it.

2.  Modifying the install disk doesn't do a damn thing to make the
driver work after the install is done and the computer is rebooted.
Sure, you can drop a new 3ware driver onto the install disk and install
to your new 3ware-enabled computer just fine.  But then you reboot, and
the stock GENERIC kernel has no idea how to talk to that device, and the
driver that you dropped onto the CD is now no where to be found, leaving
your fresh install stuck at the mountroot prompt.  \o/

=-)

Scott