Adaptec 2610, should I use it?

[PatrickBaer]

The title says it all. I have a machine with an Adaptec 2610SA raid-array. OpenBSD seems to have stopped support on this controller.

So should I go install FreeBSD instead? Or use the old aac driver?

[jggimi]

Originally Posted by PatrickBaer

OpenBSD seems to have stopped support on this controller.

Not seems. Actually has.

There is an aac(4) driver, but it is not included in the GENERIC kernel. The man page for the aac(4) driver says:

BUGS
The card provides a mechanism to do online RAID set management, unfortunately the protocol is not public.

The i386 HCL says of the aac(4) driver:

...Adaptec has lied to us repeatedly about forthcoming documentation so that RAID support for these (rather buggy) raid controllers could be stabilized, improved, and managed.
As a result, we do not recommend the Adaptec cards for use.

For a little of the history:

See http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=artic...20050318231311 for an OpenBSD Journal article with links to e-mail back and forth with Adaptec, and some discussion.

The CVS log for src/sys/arch/i386/conf/GENERIC has a one-line description for revision 1.406 which removed the aac(4) driver from the GENERIC kernel. It does not bear repeating in public. Here's a link:

http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvswe...6/conf/GENERIC

More can be had from the misc@ archives, but as there were many threads, it is best to search them yourself.

[PatrickBaer]

I've just installed FreeBSD 7.0 anyway, seemed to be the best solution

[jggimi]

It might not be the best solution. According to this, the Adaptec supplied kernel module only works with 6.x. I can't confirm, as I use neither FBSD nor Adaptec.

[PatrickBaer]

Release Notes say "The aac(4) driver now supports the Adaptec 2610SA SATA-RAID controller in some Hewlett-Packard machines.", sounds good so far.

We'll see tomorrow, I keep you updated!