Ian Collins wrote: > Brian Hechinger wrote: >> On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 05:17:45PM +1200, Ian Collins wrote: >> >>> Has anyone here had any luck using a CF to SATA adapter? >>> >>> I've just tried an Addonics ADSACFW CF to SATA adaptor with an 8GB card >>> that I wanted to use for a boot pool and even though the BIOS reports the >>> disk, Solaris B95 (or the installer) doesn't see it. >>> >> I tried this a while back with an IDE to CF adapter. Real nice looking one >> too. >> >> It would constantly cause OpenBSD to panic. >> >> I would recommend against using this, unless you get real lucky. If you want >> flash to boot from, buy one of the ones that is specifically made for it (not >> CF, but industrial grade flash meant to be a HDD). Those things work a LOT >> better. I can look up the details of the ones my friend uses if you'd like. >> >> > I was looking to run some tests with a CF boot drive before we get an > X4540, which has a CF slot. The installer did see the attached USB sticks...
My team does some of the testing inside Sun for the CF boot devices. We've used a number of IDE attaced CF adapters, such as; http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/ad44midecf.asp and also some random models from www.frys.com. We also test the CF boot feature on various Sun rack servers and blades that use a CF socket. I have not tested the SATA adapters but would not expect issues. I'd like to know if you find issues. The IDE attached devices use the legacy ATA/IDE device driver software, which had some bugs fixed for DMA and misc CF specific issues. It would be interesting to see if a SATA adapter for CF, set in bios to use AHCI instead of Legacy/IDE mode, would have any issues with the AHCI device driver software. I've had no reason to test this yet, since the Sun HW models build the CF socket right onto the motherboard/bus. I can't find a reason to worry about hot-plug, since removing the boot "drive" while Solaris is running would be, um, somewhat interesting :-) True, the enterprise grade devices are higher quality and will last longer. But do not underestimate the current (2008) device wear leveling firmware that controls the CF memory usage, and hence life span. Our in house destructive life span testing shows that the commercial grade CF device will last longer than the motherboard will. The consumer grade devices that you find in the store or on mail order, may or may not be current generation, so your device lifespan will vary. It should still be rather good for a boot device, because Solaris does very little writing to the boot "disk". You can review configuration ideas to maximize the life of your CF device in this Solaris white paper for non-volatile memory; http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/features/articles/nvm_boot.jsp I hope this helps. Cheers, Neal Pollack > > Any further information welcome. > > Ian > _______________________________________________ > zfs-discuss mailing list > zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
