HighPoint RocketRAID 174x User manual

RocketRAID 174x FreeBSD Installation Guide
RocketRAID 174x SATA Controller
FreeBSDInstallationGuide
Version 1.01
Copyright © 2006 HighPoint Technologies, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Last updated on Nov 10, 2006

RocketRAID 174x FreeBSD Installation Guide
i
Table of Contents
1 Overview.......................................................................................................................................1
2 Installing FreeBSD on RocketRAID 174x Controller...............................................................1
Step 1 Prepare Your Hardware for Installation..........................................................................1
Step 2 Check System BIOS Settings.........................................................................................1
Step 3 Prepare the Driver Diskette............................................................................................1
Step 4 Install FreeBSD..............................................................................................................2
3 Installing RR174x Driver on an Existing System......................................................................3
Step 1 Copy the Driver Module ................................................................................................4
Step 2 Test the Driver Module ..................................................................................................4
Step 3 Configure System to Automatically Load the Driver.....................................................5
Step 4 Configure System to Mount Volumes when Startup......................................................5
4 Updating the Driver.....................................................................................................................5
5 Installing RAID Management Software.....................................................................................6
6 Uninstalling...................................................................................................................................6
.

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1 Overview
The purpose of this document is to provide clear instructions on how to install and use
RocketRAID 174x Controller on a FreeBSD system.
2 Installing FreeBSD on RocketRAID 174x Controller
If you would like to install FreeBSD onto drives attached to RocketRAID 174x controller,
please perform the following operations:
Step 1 Prepare Your Hardware for Installation
After you attach your hard disks to RR174x controller, you can use RR174x BIOS Setting
Utility to configure your hard disks as RAID arrays, or just use them as single disks.
Note
If you have other SCSI adapters installed, you must make sure the RR174x controller
BIOS will be loaded firstly. If not, try to move it to another PCI slot. Otherwise you may
be unable to boot up your system.
Step 2 Check System BIOS Settings
In your system BIOS SETUP menu, change Boot Sequence in such a way that the system
will first boot from CDROM, next from and then from floppy drive, and then from SCSI.
Refer to your BIOS manual to see how to set boot sequence.
If your BIOS settings do not support such a boot sequence, you can first set it to boot from
CDROM. After you finish installation, set SCSI as the first boot device to boot up the
system.
Step 3 Prepare the Driver Diskette
If you are installing FreeBSD, you must prepare a driver disk for RR174x before
installation.
First obtain the driver diskette image file, freebsd.img.
On a DOS or Windows system, you can make the boot diskette using rawrite.exe. It can be
found on the FreeBSD CD (under \tools). Just run it under a command window and follow
its prompt.
On a FreeBSD system, you can use the “dd” command to make the driver diskette. For
example, Insert a floppy disk into the floppy drive and type the following command if you
are installing FreeBSD 5.x versions:
#dd if=freebsd_5.x.img of=/dev/fd0

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Step 4 Install FreeBSD
1) Start installing the FreeBSD by booting from installation CD.
2) If you are installing FreeBSD 5.0 or earlier versions, skip this step. When “Welcome
to FreeBSD” screen appears, select “6”.
3) When “Hit [enter] to boot immediately or any other key for command prompt”
screen appears, press SPACE key to stop loader from autobooting.
BTX loader 1.00 BTX version is 1.01
Console: internal video/keyboard
BIOS driver A: is disk0
BIOS driver B: is disk1
BIOS driver C: is disk2
BIOS 636kB/74512kB available memory
FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap loader, Revision 0.8
(mailto:[email protected], Sat Apr 21 08:46:19 GMT 2001)
-
Hit [Enter] to boot immediately, or any other key for command prompt.
Booting [kernel] in 9 seconds…
<-press SPACE key
A prompted label "ok" will appear at the bottom of the screen.
4) Insert RR174x driver diskette into floppy drive now. Type in "load diskx:rr174x-x.x"
(without quotation mark) and then press enter.
for FreeBSD 4.3-RELEASE
ok load kernel
ok load disk1:rr174x-4.3.ko
for FreeBSD 4.4-RELEASE
ok load kernel
ok load disk1:rr174x-4.4.ko
for FreeBSD 4.5-RELEASE
ok load disk1:rr174x-4.5.ko
for FreeBSD 4.6.2-RELEASE
ok load disk1:rr174x-4.6.2.ko
for FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE
ok load disk1:rr174x-4.7.ko
for FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE
ok load disk1:rr174x-4.8.ko
for FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE
ok load disk1:rr174x-4.9.ko
for FreeBSD 4.10-RELEASE
ok load disk1:rr174x-4.10.ko
for FreeBSD 4.11-RELEASE
ok load disk1:rr174x-4.11.ko
for FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE
ok load disk0:rr174x-5.0.ko
for FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE
ok load disk0:rr174x-5.1.ko
for FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE

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ok load disk0:rr174x-5.2.1.ko
for FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE
ok load disk0:rr174x-5.3.ko
for FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE
ok load disk0:rr174x-5.4.ko
for FreeBSD 5.3-AMD64-RELEASE
ok load disk0:rr174x-5.3-amd64.ko
for FreeBSD 5.4-AMD64-RELEASE
ok load disk0:rr174x-5.4-amd64.ko
for FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE
ok load disk0:rr174x-6.0.ko
for FreeBSD 6.0-AMD64-RELEASE
ok load disk0:rr174x-6.0-amd64.ko
for FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE
ok load disk0:rr174x-6.1.ko
for FreeBSD 6.1-AMD64-RELEASE
ok load disk0:rr174x-6.1-amd64.ko
5) After the driver has been loaded, remove the floppy diskette from the floppy drive.
6) Type in "boot" and continue the installation as normal. You can refer to FreeBSD
installation guide.
ok boot
Note
On some systems withACPI enabled, FreeBSD may not work. You can try to
disable ACPI in system BIOS or type the command “set
hint.acpi.0.disabled=”1”” under boot prompt to solve the problem.
7) Before exit install, an additional step must be taken to copy RR174x driver module to
system. On the driver disk, there is a setup script "postinstall" which will do this
work for you. Before you reboot the system, press Alt-F4 to the command shell and
type the following commands:
# mount –o ro /dev/fd0 /mnt
# sh /mnt/postinstall
# umount /mnt
Then press Alt-F1 to return to the setup screen and choose [X Exit Install] to finish
setup.
Note: On some systems the floppy may be inaccessible during installation. In this
case, please remove the CD, reboot from the installed system and load the driver
manually from floppy again. When system boots up you can run the postinstall script
to install the driver.
3 Installing RR174x Driver on an Existing System
If you are currently running FreeBSD and would like to access drives or arrays attached to

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the RR174x Controller, you can perform the following steps.
Step 1 Copy the Driver Module
If you have made freebsd drivers into a diskette, you can insert the driver diskette to
floppy drive, then using the following commands to copy the driver module:
for FreeBSD 4.x:
# mount –o ro /dev/fd0 /mnt
# cp /mnt/rr174x-xxx.ko /modules/rr174x.ko
# umount /mnt
for FreeBSD 5.x/6.x:
# mount –o ro /dev/fd0 /mnt
# cp /mnt/rr174x-xxx.ko /boot/kernel/rr174x.ko
# umount /mnt
You can also extract the files from .img files directly, without using a floppy diskette:
For FreeBSD 4.x:
# vnconfig vn0c freebsd_xxx.img
# mount /dev/vn0c /mnt
# cp /mnt/rr174x-xxx.ko /modules/rr174x.ko
# vnconfig –du vn0c myfilesystem mount=/mnt
For FreeBSD 5.x/6.x:
# mdconfig –a –t vnode –f freebsd_5.x.img –u 0
# mount /dev/md0 /mnt
# cp /mnt/rr174x-xxx.ko /boot/kernel/rr174x.ko
# umount /mnt
# mdconfig –d –u md0
Step 2 Test the Driver Module
You can test out the module to ensure that it works for your system by load it during
system booting.
If the module has been loaded successfully you should see the RR174x banner and a
display screen of the attached drives. You can now access the drives as a SCSI device (if
you have no other SCSI device, the first device is /dev/da0, then /dev/da1, etc.).
Example
F1 FreeBSD
Default: F1
>> FreeBSD/i386 BOOT
Default: 0:ad(0,a)/boot/loader
boot:
BTX loader 1.00 BTX version is 1.01
Console: internal video/keyboard
BIOS driver A: is disk0
BIOS driver C: is disk2
BIOS 636kB/74512kB available memory
FreeBSD/i386 bootstrap loader, Revision 0.8
(mailto:[email protected], Sat Apr 21 08:46:19 GMT 2001)
Loading /boot/defaults/loader.conf
/kernel text=0x24f1db data=0x3007ec+0x2062c -
<- For FreeBSD 5.1 and later: select “6” on “Welcome to FreeBSD” screen.
Hit [Enter] to boot immediately, or any other key for command prompt.

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Booting [kernel] in 9 seconds…
<-press SPACE key
Type ’?’ for a list of commands, ’help’ for more detailed help.
ok load rr174x
/modules/rr174x.ko text=0xf571 data=0x2c8+0x254
ok autoboot
If you have configured a RAID 1/0 using 4 disks, it will be registered to system as
device /dev/da0. You can use “/stand/sysinstall” to create partitions and disklabels (like
da0s1e) on da0. Then you can create new filesystem using “newfs /dev/da0s1e”. Now
you can mount /dev/da0s1e to somewhere to access it.
Step 3 Configure System toAutomatically Load the Driver
Most likely, you will not want to type “load rr174x” each time you boot up the system.
Therefore you must install the module and tell the system about it. To configure system
to automatically load the driver, type in the following commands:
# echo ’rr174x_load=”YES”’ >> /boot/defaults/loader.conf
This tells the loader to try loading the RR174x module together with the kernel.
Now, reboot the system. RR174x module should be automatically loaded each time
system start up.
Note
If FreeBSD you installed is 4.x version, you should type the following command to
configure your system:
# mknod /dev/rr174x c 200 0
Then, please check whether node“/dev/rr174x”exists in /dev directory.
Step 4 Configure System to Mount Volumes when Startup
Now you can inform the system to automatically mount the array by modifying the file
/etc/fstab. E.g. You can add the following line to tell the system to mount /dev/da1s1e to
location /mnt/hpt after startup:
/dev/da1s1e /mnt/hpt ufs rw 0 0
4 Updating the Driver
To update the driver with a new version you simply reinstall the driver following the previous
section, “Install the driver on an existing system”.

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5 Installing RAID Management Software
HighPoint RAID Management Software is used to configure and keep track of your hard
disks and RAID arrays attached to RR174x controller. Installation of the management
software is optional but recommended.
To configure HighPoint RAID Management Software to work with RR174x driver, you
should setup /etc/hptcfg to be the driver name:
# echo rr174x > /etc/hptcfg
Please refer to HighPoint RAID Management Software documents for more information.
6 Uninstalling
You can only uninstall the driver when your system is not booting from devices attached to
RR174x controller. Just remove the line
rr174x_load=”YES”
in /boot/defaults/loader.conf, and then delete the driver module /modules/rr174x.ko or
/boot/kernel/rr174x.ko .