Subject: Re: Installing NetBSD experiences and help wanted
To: None <netbsd-users@netbsd.org>
From: Jimmie Houchin <jhouchin@texoma.net>
List: netbsd-users
Date: 06/21/2005 10:46:42
Hello,

Robert Cates wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> it seems I just read another post about a problem with NetBSD not 
> finding the harddrive, which I find very interesting.  What I'm 
> wondering is how you have your BIOS set, i.e. the boot-order, and if you 
> can set the 1st boot device for the 1st drive of your LSI MegaRaid card 
> (I'm assuming you don't have any IDE harddrives installed on that 
> machine).  Added note, I've recently found out myself that the NetBSD 
> installer currently only supports installation on one harddrive.  Any 
> additional harddrives you have in the machine need to be setup after 
> installation.  It could be that the NetBSD does not support that 
> particular LSI MegaRaid card yet, but have a look at the BIOS settings.

As far as I remember the LSI drives are presented as the first drive.
I have no IDE drives, the onboard Promise SATA is empty, I have 2 arrays 
on my LSI card.

While composing this email I went to the hardware page you linked.
I then searched the site. I haven't found any explicit references to 
support my thoughts that NetBSD had support for the LSI 150-6 
controller. I thought it did. My bad, my apologies.

I guess in reading the NetBSD and FreeBSD docs I mixed them up.
FreeBSD supports the LSI 150-6 controller.
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.4R/hardware-amd64.html

After a little research apparently FreeBSD didn't support this card 
until 5.4. So it is pretty recent for them also.

I don't understand why vendor (when they do) support Linux better and 
sooner than the BSDs. The BSD license and culture I think seems 
friendlier to the corporate environment. Hmm. :(

I haven't tried FreeBSD on this machine. Just my desktop.
Hopefully soon these drivers will be ported, and I can possibly give 
NetBSD a try on this machine. Unless I've deployed it by then.

I cced as stated below the netbsd-help address. Since this isn't a 
platform specific issue I didn't email the amd64 port maintainer.

Thanks.

Jimmie

> You may want to mail the port maintainer directly: 
> port-amd64-maintainer@netbsd.org or netbsd-help@netbsd.org
> 
> I did find LSI Logic RAID MegaRAID 320-1, 320-2 listed on the 
> http://www.netbsd.org/Hardware/pci.html web page, which you might want 
> to lookover.  You might want to check exactly which chipset is on the 
> card, maybe it uses a chipset that is not yet supported.(?)  Supported 
> NICs are also listed on that page.  Go one page up for other supported 
> hardware.
> 
> In any case, I'm interested to know what you end up doing.
> 
> -Robert


[snip original message]