freebsd stable - Mar 2004 - Backporting S-ATA driver SiI 3112a to FreeBSD-STABLE?

Hi,

I've received a bunch of ASUS A7N8X-E deluxe together with Serial ATA hard 
disks. I had planned to run 4.9 on this combo, but it seems the Serial ATA 
support for this driver does not exist before 5.x or so. The controller is 
a SiI 3112a from Silicon Image.

Is there any chance of backporting this driver to -STABLE? At a glance, it 
seems like a lot of work?

We will use these machines as developer workstations, and need them to have 
the same major FreeBSD revision as our customer servers, so we must really 
run FreeBSD 4.x. Hence, I have two choices, either backporting the SiS 
3112a driver from -CURRENT, or trying to get the store to accept trading 
the harddisks for plain old parallel ATA ones.

Also, I've read a few pretty bad judgements about this controller from some 
individuals. Is this true in any way?

Suggestions and input appreciated.

Thanks,
Palle

Well, Sil3112a is quite crappy sata controller :) I think it wouldnt 
worth backporting the driver at all. I have had exactly the same 
mainboard and I got sick of the SATA errors I get, and just trashed the 
board and got a new one. I am now happy :)

Your best option seams to be changing your drives to PATA. This will 
save you from some future problems like losing data also :)

Evren

Palle Girgensohn wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've received a bunch of ASUS A7N8X-E deluxe together with Serial ATA 
> hard disks. I had planned to run 4.9 on this combo, but it seems the 
> Serial ATA support for this driver does not exist before 5.x or so. The 
> controller is a SiI 3112a from Silicon Image.
> 
> Is there any chance of backporting this driver to -STABLE? At a glance, 
> it seems like a lot of work?
> 
> We will use these machines as developer workstations, and need them to 
> have the same major FreeBSD revision as our customer servers, so we must 
> really run FreeBSD 4.x. Hence, I have two choices, either backporting 
> the SiS 3112a driver from -CURRENT, or trying to get the store to accept 
> trading the harddisks for plain old parallel ATA ones.
> 
> Also, I've read a few pretty bad judgements about this controller from 
> some individuals. Is this true in any way?
> 
> Suggestions and input appreciated.
> 
> Thanks,
> Palle
> 
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable
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On Saturday 13 March 2004 03:20, Palle Girgensohn wrote:
> Also, I've read a few pretty bad judgements about this controller from
some
> individuals. Is this true in any way?
Very. The company even has a history in awful ata hardware - remember the 
CMD640? It still has a quite prominent place in the Linux kernel config...

-- 
   ,_,   | Michael Nottebrock               | lofi@freebsd.org
 (/^ ^\) | FreeBSD - The Power to Serve     | http://www.freebsd.org
   \u/   | K Desktop Environment on FreeBSD | http://freebsd.kde.org
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Palle Girgensohn writes:
| I've received a bunch of ASUS A7N8X-E deluxe together with Serial ATA hard
| disks. I had planned to run 4.9 on this combo, but it seems the Serial ATA 
| support for this driver does not exist before 5.x or so. The controller is 
| a SiI 3112a from Silicon Image.
| 
| Is there any chance of backporting this driver to -STABLE? At a glance, it 
| seems like a lot of work?
| 
| We will use these machines as developer workstations, and need them to have 
| the same major FreeBSD revision as our customer servers, so we must really 
| run FreeBSD 4.x. Hence, I have two choices, either backporting the SiS 
| 3112a driver from -CURRENT, or trying to get the store to accept trading 
| the harddisks for plain old parallel ATA ones.
| 
| Also, I've read a few pretty bad judgements about this controller from
some
| individuals. Is this true in any way?
| 
| Suggestions and input appreciated.

You might consider this as a base:
	http://www.ambrisko.com/doug/ata/ata_stable_sata.patch

It's not fully done.  The Intel SATA support is getting better for
the 6300ESB ICH.  The ICH5 SATA should work like the 6300ESB but I
haven't tested it.  The Promise SATA support is solid in our testing.
Hot swap works well.  I've been spending a lot of time in this area.

BTW a failure mode in the SATA spec. says freeze (ie. lock up the
system if you don't acknowledge SATA issues).

Most issues have been fixed or works for me.

Doug A.