just installed s10_u6 with a root pool. i''m blown away. so now i want to attach my external storage via firewire. i could use usb2 but i prefer firewire as i won''t need an external hub. what firewire cards are supported for x86? the HCL doesn''t list any that i could find. i searched for any of the terms ''firewire'', ''1394'', ''ohci'', ''uhci'', ''ehci''. -frank
On Tue, 27 Jan 2009, Frank Cusack wrote:> what firewire cards are supported for x86? the HCL doesn''t list any that > i could find. i searched for any of the terms ''firewire'', ''1394'', ''ohci'', > ''uhci'', ''ehci''.The Sun Ultra-40 (recently discontinued) comes with dual 400Mbit firefire ports. See if you can figure out what hardware it uses. I would be surprised if it is not the same hardware that was used for SPARC systems like the Blade 2500 and Ultra-45, with a commercially available adaptor card still available as recent as a couple of years ago (when I last checked). The firewire support in the Ultra-40 is from the motherboard rather than an adaptor card. However, be aware that bugs causing problems with ZFS were reported against the Firewire support, and it is not clear if anyone got around to fixing them even though the fix was apparently simple. I am using USB2 with two external drives without problem. Bob =====================================Bob Friesenhahn bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/ GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
On Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:01:55 -0600 (CST) Bob Friesenhahn <bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us> wrote:> On Tue, 27 Jan 2009, Frank Cusack wrote: > > > what firewire cards are supported for x86? the HCL doesn''t list > > any that i could find. i searched for any of the terms ''firewire'', > > ''1394'', ''ohci'', ''uhci'', ''ehci''. > > The Sun Ultra-40 (recently discontinued) comes with dual 400Mbit > firefire ports. See if you can figure out what hardware it uses. I > would be surprised if it is not the same hardware that was used for > SPARC systems like the Blade 2500 and Ultra-45, with a commercially > available adaptor card still available as recent as a couple of years > ago (when I last checked). The firewire support in the Ultra-40 is > from the motherboard rather than an adaptor card. > > However, be aware that bugs causing problems with ZFS were reported > against the Firewire support, and it is not clear if anyone got > around to fixing them even though the fix was apparently simple. > > I am using USB2 with two external drives without problem.Hi Frank, This is what lspci reports on my u40m2 system: 01:08.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link) (prog-if 10 [OHCI]) Subsystem: Sun Microsystems Computer Corp.: Unknown device 6676 Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- Status: Cap+ 66Mhz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- Latency: 64 (500ns min, 1000ns max), cache line size 10 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11 Region 0: Memory at a0104800 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) Region 1: Memory at a0100000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2 Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0+,D1+,D2+,D3hot+,D3cold-) Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME+ prtconf reports that the full pci vid/did information is pci104c,8023.108e.6676.0 As Bob mentioned, this is on the motherboard rather than a plugin card. James C. McPherson -- Senior Kernel Software Engineer, Solaris Sun Microsystems http://blogs.sun.com/jmcp http://www.jmcp.homeunix.com/blog
Frank Cusack wrote:> just installed s10_u6 with a root pool. i''m blown away. so now i want > to attach my external storage via firewire.I was able to use this cheap thing with good initial results: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815124002 However, I ran into a frequent hang[1] and declined to put it in the HWCL. The hang appears to be a bug in the scsa1394 kernel module, and are not yet fixed. I''ve moved the disks our of their Firewire case and inside a machine with SATA-to-IDE converters (ick). [1] http://bugs.opensolaris.org/view_bug.do?bug_id=6539587 Rob T
thanks for all the feedback. i guess i''ll stick with usb2.
Which firewire card? Any firewire card that is OHCI compliant, which is almost any add-on firewire card that you would buy new these days. The bigger question is the firewire drive that you want to use or, more precisely, the 1394-to-ATA (or SATA) bridge used by the drive. Some work better than others with OpenSolaris. Also, there is a bug in the OpenSolaris sbp2/scsa1394 modules that manifests itself in ZFS. Juergen Keil provided a fix some time ago. The fix seems to work for a lot of people, so there have been many requests to integrate it. However, there also seems to be instances where the fix may make things worse, so it has not yet been integrated into OpenSolaris. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
ok, how about a 4 port PCIe usb2.0 card that works?
>>>>> "ap" == Alan Perry <alan.perry at sun.com> writes:ap> the firewire drive that you want to use or, more precisely, ap> the 1394-to-ATA (or SATA) bridge for me Oxford 911 worked well, and PL-3507 crashed daily and needed a reboot of the case to come back. Prolific released new firmware, but it didn''t help. I think there are probably bugs in some USB cases, too. Oxford 911 seems to describe a brand of chips, not a specific chip, but it''s been a good brand, and it''s a very old brand for firewire. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 304 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/zfs-discuss/attachments/20090128/1ae17ba8/attachment.bin>
On Jan 28, 2009, at 16:39, Miles Nordin wrote:> Oxford 911 seems to describe a brand of chips, not a specific chip, > but it''s been a good brand, and it''s a very old brand for firewire.As an added bonus this chipset allow "multiple logins" so it can be used to experiment with this like Oracle RAC. There''s a list of products that have the 911 (as well as 912 and 922) in this article: http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/hunter_rac10gr2.html#5 (Scroll down to "Miscellaneous Components".)
I am pretty sure that Oxford 911 is a family of parts. The current Oxford Firewire parts are the 934 and 936 families. It appears that the Oxford 911 was commonly used in drive enclosures. The most troublesome part in my experience is the Initio INIC-1430. It does not get along with scsa1394 at all. -- This message posted from opensolaris.org