I'm not sure if I'm expecting too much, or this is a real bug.

Using FreeBSD 6.1 release, CVSup'd to current. The motherboard is a Supermicro 
P4SCT0 with a 3.2Ghz P4 and 2 DDR400 1G sticks of RAM.  On the MB is a built-in 
RAID controller (Adaptec chip) for the SATA drives.  You set it for discrete 
SATA or RAID.  If RAID is set, on the next boot you have essentially a BIOS 
configuration for that 'device' consisting of the two SATA devices in either 
RAID 0 (striped) or RAID 1 (mirrored).

I already had a functional SATA boot drive (first SATA device) which shows up 
on the OS as device ad4s1a-f.  I added a second identical drive as the second 
SATA device, configured the BIOS setting for SATA RAID, rebooted, set up an 
array of RAID 1 with the first drive as the master.  The second device was then 
built up as a mirror of the first and everything looked normal.

Boot the OS now and all goes well with the device still showing up on /dev/ad4* 
but I couldn't tell if the mirroring was really working since the drives have 
no individual led indications.  I then noticed that there was a new ad6* 
device, and guess what -- it was the second SATA drive and a mirror image of 
the *original* first drive.  Watching it with DF for size changes when copying 
a large file to my home directory, it didn't change at all.

ad6* were the only new devices seen in the OS.

Went back to the BIOS which displayed that instead of two SATA drives there was 
one RAID unit as far as it's concerned.

So it appears as though FreeBSD doesn't have the right drivers to actually see 
the RAID volume built by the BIOS and considers its members to be individual 
devices.

Does this ring any bells with anyone?  Suggestions?


A separate and semi-related question, this system also has 16 other drives with 
two 3Ware 9500SML controllers and 8x500 and 8x750GB arrays.  It's managed 
remotely with X.  In this type of application, is Hyperthreading best on or off?

Of course for just reading files it's not a big issue, but receiving large 
files seems to be largely limited by processing interrupts from the 1G ether.  
They shoot up to 50% and stay pretty consistent regardless of variations in the 
incoming stream.  If Hyperthreading was off, wouldn't there be better 
performance inbound?  Or would that be a tradeoff when the entire picture is 
taken into account?

Thanks for any insights.

--Bill

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