Scott Stanley wrote:
Thanks so much for the help Bill.
I was afraid I had blown $100 out of ingnorance.
As a wrap-up (for future googlers):
- I stuck the card in a PC (since Macs don't have POST)
Actually they DO. And quite informative even if prone to use rather contrarian
naming conventions et al.
You can either toggle it on instead of that brain-dead grey screen per-each-boot
if you have enough nimble fingers to do the verdammt 'dance' in time,
ELSE change the BIOS so it is the default and always shows up.
The second of those, 'always showing' - optionally pause IN the boot process and
await console input - come VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - should really be a 'before
you do anything else' step when applying any OS beyond what Jobs ships.
Otherwise one is blind and powerless to intervene at a crucial point in time.
Google for the 'dance' keys for that - I don't remember the settings offhand.
- Saw the Areca BIOS appear after system POST, hit "tab" to enter settings
- Toggled from RAID to JBOD
- Reinsert into Mac
- sd0 shows up, ready to use/configure
you all are the reason why OBSD is the only software I've ever paid
for; thanks a million!
-Scott
I am sure the devel team would be pleased if a few more folks DID buy the CD's
or such. The whole project has to be the 'bargain of the age'.
AFAIK, they are all in it for the pursuit of excellence, not economic gain.
That said, even coders have to eat.
And pay for bandwidth, hardware ...even a bit of travel and accomodations now
and then.
So if anyone doesn't want or need a CD or Tee-shirt, I'm sure the price of same
as a straight donation or with a note to NOT SEND such (also saving shipping)
would not be unwelcome.
Good luck with it all,
Bill
The details should be 'there' in dmesg, but so long as the Areca has been
reported by the OS, the 'topmost' hardware layer should be in communication,
and the layers below it should 'JFDTRT' - already coded by other wizards.
That said - the Areca and others being 'intelligent' controller's, you must
ALSO enter ITS OWN BIOS and tell it how you want it to behave.
Even if only one drive is attached, the Areca has to be told what to do with
it, and what 'public face' to present to the OS for it.
There should be a message from the Areca showing right after POST, prior to
seeking to load an OS. Perform the key-magic to enter that and things should
become clear.
Only AFTER you have given the Areca the lie you want it to tell will that
lie become visible to the OS.
It won't be the actual HDD, 'coz the Os now works to the Areca, not directly
to the device.
Or pool of devices.
Not uncommon to have an 9-drive RAID array including local and global spares
appear to the OS as a single device. And it might be one of several such.
A decent controller earns its crust, manages spare swap-in, rebuild of spare
or hot-swapped devices, 'patrol' of its devices, and all that - w/o
troubling the OS. 'Most of the time' one can migrate the controller and its
array(s) to another OS, even another CPU arch near-as-dammit transparently,
so even w/o RAID, they are a good investment when you have a lot of data.
FWIW, historically those based on LSi chipsets, and more recently Areca, are
generally among the most cross OS/architecture portable and least
problematic of such controllers.
HTH,
Bill Hacker
