>>>>> "jcm" == James C McPherson <james.mcpher...@sun.com> writes:

   jcm> the mpt(7D) driver supports that card.

Then I am apparently stuck with a closed-source driver again, and
again by surprise.  I bought it because I thought you said 1068E was
supported by mega_sas:

    >> http://www.osnews.com/thread?317113

   jcm> The driver for LSI's MegaRAID SAS card is "mega_sas" which was
   jcm> integrated into snv_88. It's planned for backporting to a
   jcm> Solaris 10 update.

but apparently it was wishful thinking on my part:

   jcm> There are several LSI cards which use the 1068 and 1068E chip.
   jcm> Some of these use mpt(7d), some use mega_sas(7d). It all
   jcm> depends on the firmware of the card, basically. You could also
   jcm> have a look at the PCI IDs database at
   jcm> http://pciids.sourceforge.net to see what the name to pci
   jcm> vid/did mapping is. That provides a fairly good indicator of
   jcm> whether you'll need mpt(7d) or mega_sas(7d).

I downloaded the pci.ids file from sourceforge, but I do not
understand how to tell which cards have the proprietary closed-source
driver, even if I somehow know the PCI ID of the card before I buy it?

(pci.ids lists only chip number in the description, and (a) LSI does
not disclose the chip-to-card model association, and apparently the
same chip can have different drivers so chip number isn't enough).  

Is there some file in OpenSolaris against which I can cross-reference
this?  or...really, just use instead of pci.ids, since only the PCI ID
not the description is enough to uniquely identify the card.

Is it possible to change the firmware and thus the driver binding
without changing the PCI ID so that I have to worry about
manufacturers doing that, or can I really count on the PCI ID alone to
tell me which driver will run the card?  I'm worried that for example
adding an iButton to unlock RAID5 on a supermicro card will change the
driver attachment.

Also does anyone know which cards work on SPARC?  None?  All?  I know
the SATA framework is x86 only, but AIUI none of the LSI cards
actually use the SATA framework (so, presumably things like
hd/smartmontools will not work, but at least the card has got a better
shot of working on SPARC).  I cannot test the AOC-USAS-L8i card I have
in SPARC because it is PCIe, and I have only a PCI-X SPARC.

Does anyone have an affordable card which is working well with the
open-source mega_sas driver?  It seems we are still without any
open-source SATA card that works well.

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