arc-1882 sas raid card

[punktilend]

I have been trying to get this thing to work for about a week and when I try to either use tunable it does not enable it like it says.

I have tried going through the process of https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/kernelconfig-config.html
but end up needing to do https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/svn.html
but again when trying to do this it ends up failing with either loading the package or download and am not able to get through the process.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I am running freenas 9.1.1

 

[Knowltey]

You should not be running a RAID card with FreeNAS. ZFS needs direct control of the RAID in order to function properly. Using a RAID card to make the RAID prevents ZFS from being able to perform the checks it needs to perform in order to functon properly.

 

[punktilend]

So, ZFS is the only solution I can use?

I have 24 disk system that I am setting up with a arc-1882 card. I figured to try using freenas with this system but from what I understand ZFS is not necessarily the only configuration I have to use or am I wrong?

 

[Knowltey]

ZFS isn't, technically there is also UFS, but many of the features of FreeNAS don't work when the pool is in UFS mode and using UFS is really only recommended when you don't meet the minimum system RAM requirements of ZFS. When using UFS you lose out on snapshotting and srubbing among other things.

 

[punktilend]

So how do I enable the driver to work?

 

[punktilend]

I have found the instructions for installation through areca website but they are not working correctly for me.

Code:

a. Installing system
 
            1 Insert the FreeNAS Installation CD/DVD.
            2 Insert the USB flash/floppy drive or diskette.
            3 Restart your computer.
            4 When "Welcome to FreeNAS!" screen display, Press ESC to escape to loader prompt.
            5 Type "lsdev" to find USB flash/floppy drive disk number. Here, we assume it is disk4.
            6 Type "load disk4s1:arcmsr.ko"
            7 Type "boot" to continue the FreeNAS installation.
           
        b. Updating driver module arcmsr.ko  ---- !!! IMPORTANT IMPORTANT !!!
 
            Before Exit install and reboot,
            you have to overwrite /boot/kernel/arcmsr.ko by arcmsr.ko in flash/floppy drive.
 
            - After system is installed completely, and system return to
            "FreeNAS xxx Console Setup" screen:
            Select 2) Shell, system will enter into command prompt.
 
            Type following command to update the arcmsr.ko and loader.conf
            We assume that USB flash( or floppy) drive is device da4.(the device number depends on how many drives installed in your system)
 
            # mkdir /mnt1
            # mount_msdosfs /dev/da4s1 /mnt1
 
            And we assume that FreeNAS OS was installed on da0s1.
            # mount /dev/da0s1a /mnt
            # ls /mnt1
            # ls /mnt
            # ls /mnt/boot
            # ls /mnt/boot/kernel
            # cp -f /mnt1/arcmsr.ko /mnt/boot/kernel
            # echo 'arcmsr_load="YES"' >> /mnt/boot/loader.conf
            # umount /mnt
            # umount /mnt1
            # exit
   
            Remove the flash/floppy drive or diskette.
 
        c. Select 3) Reboot System, to reboot the system

I am stuck at the "load disk4s1:arcmsr.ko" portion, when I go to the shell (which i assume they mean by loader prompt) see what disk it is it shows as da0 and when I plug that into it I get "load: not found"

any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[cyberjock]

I had an Areca, and I will warn you that you are walking a thin line between "it works" and "I lost my data". That controller isn't recommended for ZFS, the drivers I see are for 9.1(no 9.2 support, which FreeNAS will be using in 2 weeks). And you'd be crazy to try to use 24 disks with UFS for a bunch of reasons. ;)

My recommendation is to get one of the recommended cards(like the M1015) and go that route. For the amount of time you're going to spend to maybe get it to kind of work you can spend $100 and get stuff that will solidly function for your use.