Several new professional grade rack servers (especially barebones from Supermicro and several IBM servers) use this new Adaptec aic94xx RAID driver. It is not proper until fairly recent 2.6.23 kernel releases, and requires GPL firmware to properly load. The existing work around is to create your own LiveCD*, but that seems rather extreme. Please push out a new release of the Install CD for those with so many of these servers. For those with this problem on a 32-bit arch, somebody created a custom 32-bit Gentoo LiveCD here ( http://wiki.gentoo.fo/doku.php ) ... but I don't want to trust some random person. I would much rather have a master disc that I can burn from an official Gentoo release for various security reasons. If you have questions please post them and I'll do my best to answer them. If you try the 32-bit LiveCD I linked above, you have to do a ( # rmmod aic94xx ; modprobe aic94xx ) before it works properly... but after that it's golden. From my own personal research, it seems most of the aic94xx patches hit the kernel at release 2.6.23 ... with some SMP related DMA fixes around 2.6.23.6. * http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Adaptec_aic94xx_with_bootable_software_RAID1 Reproducible: Always
Is the package that provides firmware for this controller in the tree? If so, what is it?
No @ portage tree. It's aic94xx-seq.fw .... A quick Google shows it in the tree of a kernel developer: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/jejb/
For people with this chip, the ONLY SOLUTION I can find at this time aside from rolling your own LiveCD is to use Ubuntu Hardy Heron Alpha 2. I tried over a dozen major distros. It's the only one that works.
Anybody know if this firmware is in the tree now?
(In reply to comment #4) > Anybody know if this firmware is in the tree now? > /usr/src/linux-2.6.24-gentoo-r8/drivers/scsi/aic94xx /usr/src/linux-2.6.24-gentoo-r8/drivers/scsi/aic94xx/Makefile /usr/src/linux-2.6.24-gentoo-r8/drivers/scsi/aic94xx/aic94xx.h /usr/src/linux-2.6.24-gentoo-r8/drivers/scsi/aic94xx/Kconfig /usr/src/linux-2.6.24-gentoo-r8/drivers/scsi/aic94xx/aic94xx_dump.c /usr/src/linux-2.6.24-gentoo-r8/drivers/scsi/aic94xx/aic94xx_dump.h /usr/src/linux-2.6.24-gentoo-r8/drivers/scsi/aic94xx/aic94xx_init.c /usr/src/linux-2.6.24-gentoo-r8/drivers/scsi/aic94xx/aic94xx_task.c /usr/src/linux-2.6.24-gentoo-r8/drivers/scsi/aic94xx/aic94xx_dev.c /usr/src/linux-2.6.24-gentoo-r8/drivers/scsi/aic94xx/aic94xx_hwi.c /usr/src/linux-2.6.24-gentoo-r8/drivers/scsi/aic94xx/aic94xx_hwi.h /usr/src/linux-2.6.24-gentoo-r8/drivers/scsi/aic94xx/aic94xx_reg.c /usr/src/linux-2.6.24-gentoo-r8/drivers/scsi/aic94xx/aic94xx_reg.h /usr/src/linux-2.6.24-gentoo-r8/drivers/scsi/aic94xx/aic94xx_sas.h /usr/src/linux-2.6.24-gentoo-r8/drivers/scsi/aic94xx/aic94xx_scb.c /usr/src/linux-2.6.24-gentoo-r8/drivers/scsi/aic94xx/aic94xx_sds.c /usr/src/linux-2.6.24-gentoo-r8/drivers/scsi/aic94xx/aic94xx_seq.c /usr/src/linux-2.6.24-gentoo-r8/drivers/scsi/aic94xx/aic94xx_seq.h /usr/src/linux-2.6.24-gentoo-r8/drivers/scsi/aic94xx/aic94xx_tmf.c /usr/src/linux-2.6.24-gentoo-r8/drivers/scsi/aic94xx/aic94xx_reg_def.h Looks like a no. I know Ubuntu 8.04 "just works" with this, but I think they're using a 2.6.26 kernel. Seeing as how I could not find a .deb with aic94xx firmware, I'd have to assume the firmware ships with more recent versions of the kernel.
It's not in the 2008.0 release yet... Is there anything holding this up? It just looks like the aic94xx-seq.fw file has to be shoved into /lib/firmware... I manually wget'd it from the install CD enviroment yesterday and it worked.
Have you tried one of the installcd autobuilds?
On latest autobuild install cd (install-amd64-minimal-20090611) i get: Jun 16 14:27:02 livecd aic94xx: Adaptec aic94xx SAS/SATA driver version 1.0.3 loaded Jun 16 14:27:02 livecd aic94xx 0000:09:02.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18 Jun 16 14:27:02 livecd aic94xx: found Adaptec AIC-9410W SAS/SATA Host Adapter, device 0000:09:02.0 Jun 16 14:27:02 livecd scsi1 : aic94xx Jun 16 14:27:02 livecd aic94xx 0000:09:02.0: firmware: requesting aic94xx-seq.fw Jun 16 14:27:02 livecd aic94xx: Failed to load sequencer firmware file aic94xx-seq.fw, error -2 Jun 16 14:27:02 livecd aic94xx: couldn't init seqs for 0000:09:02.0 Jun 16 14:27:02 livecd aic94xx: couldn't init the chip Jun 16 14:27:02 livecd aic94xx 0000:09:02.0: PCI INT A disabled Jun 16 14:27:02 livecd aic94xx: probe of 0000:09:02.0 failed with error -2 Jun 16 14:27:02 livecd firmware.sh[16431]: Cannot find firmware file 'aic94xx-seq.fw'
(In reply to comment #1) > Is the package that provides firmware for this controller in the tree? If so, > what is it? The same question stands. We can't add it to the installcd unless there's a package for it in the portage tree. Is there?
(In reply to comment #9) > The same question stands. We can't add it to the installcd unless there's a > package for it in the portage tree. Is there? > No as far as i know. If the license they provide let us distribute firmware in ebuilds i can add it to the tree now.
Anyone looked at the license of the firmware?
The license is contained in this file: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/jejb/aic94xx_sequencer_fw.tar.bz2 aic94xx_seq_microcode.c states that the license is GPL-2. If that statement is correct, then we would be perfectly justified in packaging it.
If we can get some gentoo dev to commit the firmware package to the tree and get it marked stable, I'll add it to the installcd specs.
I'm reassigning this bug to reflect that we need a maintainer for this firmware package.
As there were no volunteer to package this in the past 6 years, I'm dropping release from this bug. Feel free to add us back when the package is in the tree and gets stable keywords.
