Using the Dell SAS 5 (SAS1068) controller in FreeBSD 6 :

What follows below are my continuing notes and experiences in regards to installing and configuring the Dell SAS 5 (SAS1068) controller with FreeBSD.

We recently ordered some new servers from Dell. They are the PowerEdge 860 model of server, and they come with Dell's rebranded LSI Serial-Attached-SCSI controller, the SAS1068. Our servers came with two drives installed, so we configured the RAID as a disk mirror in the SAS1068 configuration menu during bootup.

Getting the controller working :

I attempted to install FreeBSD by booting to a 6.1-RELEASE boot cd. However, the SAS1068 controller was not recognized properly during the hardware detection process during the installation startup.

As it turns out, this controller is only recently supported by the mpt device in FreeBSD, and was only properly recognized when I attempted to install using a FreeBSD 6.2-BETA3 boot-cd image downloaded from the main FreeBSD ftp site.

I found next to no information about using FreeBSD with this controller during several Google searches, so hopefully this information helps someone. It is likely that Dell uses this controller in several models of their server equipment.

Additional messages :

The following messages appear in the dmesg output from the boot process; not sure what they mean, but the controller seems to be working properly.

mpt0: port 0xec00-0xecff mem 0xfe9fc000-0xfe9fffff,0xfe9e0000-0xfe9effff irq 16 at device 8.0 on pci2
mpt0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
mpt0: MPI Version=1.5.12.0
mpt0: mpt_cam_event: 0x16
mpt0: Unhandled Event Notify Frame. Event 0x16 (ACK not required).
mpt0: mpt_cam_event: 0x12
mpt0: Unhandled Event Notify Frame. Event 0x12 (ACK not required).
mpt0: mpt_cam_event: 0x12
mpt0: Unhandled Event Notify Frame. Event 0x12 (ACK not required).
mpt0: mpt_cam_event: 0x16
mpt0: Unhandled Event Notify Frame. Event 0x16 (ACK not required).
mpt0: mpt_cam_event: 0xb
mpt0: Unhandled Event Notify Frame. Event 0xb (ACK not required).

Morals of the story :

• FreeBSD 6.2 (-BETA3, and probably -PRERELEASE also) or better are required to support this controller.