FreeBSD sees through Hardware RAID

[raz0rblade]

Im trying to install freebsd 5.1 on my testing server, it detects my hds but as seperate hds not as one disk as I have set it up in the Sil0680 bios. I read the freebsd handbook, and it's suppose to see it as one disk. Any ideas ?? Also I tried to access the emergency shell, but it has no ls or anything ?

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

Exactly what model of card is it?

Have you tried a Google search? I'd suggest using "name of card"+"FreeBSD" in a search there.

Personally, I've never used a hardware RAID solution, so I won't be much more help... :(

[raz0rblade]

I dont have a name of the card, I just know it uses Sil0680 as the chip. Yes, I've tried Sil0680 FreeBSD on google and Sil0680 on Google/BSD. No luck :(

[ricstr]

The sil0680 is not a true hardware RAID, it uses the systems CPU to do its work. The operating system needs a driver to use the device in the RAID mode.

I have this card and when I was looking for RAID drivers it appeard there was no Linux or BSD drivers for RAID, only standard IDE drivers. Though that was a few months back.

When its states that the card is supported by Linux/FreeBSD what they mean is that it is supported as an IDE controller not an IDE RAID controller.

If you must use a RAID setup possibly consider this:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/raid.html

[raz0rblade]

Thanks, but how would I do this in the installer ? The emergency shell has pretty much nothing.

[ricstr]

Im not sure if you can boot FreeBSD from a software RAID.
What RAID mode are you using?

If your are using mode 1 (Mirroring) then you can try boot from software RAID, do a normal install on one disk then setup the software RAID and re-build the array so that it can mirror the data on the blank disk.

RAID 0 (Striping) I dont think it can be done.

[raz0rblade]

O well, guess ill just stick to how i have it now (/ and swap on disk0 and /usr on disk1)