Final NAS hardware setup, EON install

Have 2 PCI cards: sil3124 addonics 4xSATA card, sil0680 syba 4xCF->SATA card. intend to use CF card as boot drive, to keep all drive bays free for mass storage (and USB boot does not work with Solaris formatting on my motherboard's BIOS)

Problem: with only sil3124 plugged in PCI2, BIOS pops up 3124 drive detection, and those drives show up in BIOS drive listing. Plugging sil0680 into PCI1, BIOS does an 0680 drive detection, which takes about 30 seconds (!) but does not detect 3124 drives. nevertheless, booting off of EON CD, once booted the 3124 drives show up to 'format' so this does not appear to be a blocking issue.

Problem: OpenSolaris supports sil0680, but this driver is not on the EON install CD, therefore my CF card does not show up to the "format" or "install.sh" commands. ouch. So I have to either add the driver to the running system, or build my own install CD. The former would obviously be the quicker option, if it is possible.

relevant links:
http://eonstorage.blogspot.com/2009/02/adding-your-own-drivers-to-eon.html
http://eonstorage.blogspot.com/2009/02/another-way-to-add-drivers-to-eon.html
http://eonstorage.blogspot.com/2009/05/eon-zfs-nas-meets-ips-packages.html

let's try "another way" method from 2nd link above... should allow us to add driver to running system, which will then detect the CF card, then we can install with CF card support. failing that, we can install to a legacy IDE drive, patch up the drivers there, reboot with sil0680 support, and install to CF.

from http://genunix.org/ find the appropriate link to OS release which matches EON release: http://www.genunix.org/distributions/indiana/osol-1002-125-x86.iso download it, opening the iso image is no problem but all the drivers seem to be bound up in a .zlib file

...

after some searching, it seems there is no separate 0680 driver? don't find it at http://pkg.opensolaris.org/ or in files on OS full install CD, even after booting it.

on booted OS snv_125 liveCD system, look for any sign of my device:

% prtconf
...
pci8068,244e, instance #0
pci1095,3680 (driver not attached)

there it is! numbers match what i saw in BIOS POST. it is device class RAID, but so is the addonics card... generic ata driver should be enough. actually, the addonics card is using si3124 driver, which support RAID features... but generic ATA should still be enough?

"prtconf -D" shows sd disks hanging from devices using "ahci" "ata" and "sil3124" cards... "ata" sounds like a good possibility. how to attach the driver to our device?

become root with "su -" passwd "opensolaris"

/usr/X11R6/bin/scanpci also shows it:

pci bus 0x0006 cardnum 0x00 function 0x00: vendor 0x1095 device 0x0680
Silicon Image, Inc. PCI0680 Ultra ATA-133 Host Controller

from http://www.timelordz.com/wiki/index.php/OpenSolaris_Indiana_2008.11_Acer_Aspire_One_Install#Attaching_the_Driver we should attach the driver by removing it and adding it with correct args... however the driver is already in use for the onboard ata. how to handle this? one option would be to change BIOS settings for onboard to run in AHCI mode. another option is to find syntax for loading attaching one driver to multiple devices.

% add_drv -i "pci1095,680" ata
("ata") already in use as a driver or alias

so do need to remove it first... therefore need list of every device it applies to it?

here is a supposed method to attach device to installed driver:

update_drv -a -i 'pci1095,680' ata

executes with no output... "format" shows the same list of disks. nothing in dmesg.
oops, command used wrong pci spec:

update_drv -a -i 'pci1095,3680' ata

still no output, no new disk under "format", prtconf shows 'driver not attached'

'man update_drv' says it will take effect after 'reconfig boot or hotplug of the device'

update_drv -v -a -i '"pci1095,3680"' ata

no dice. however /etc/driver_aliases does list the additions... i guess reboot is required.

lots of similar troubleshooting:
http://forums.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=5088663
http://bugs.opensolaris.org/view_bug.do?bug_id=6595150
http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Community+Group+advocacy/intro-solaris-drivers
same chip:
http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/driver-discuss/2006-June/000340.html

proof this chip can work:
http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=9349

if reboot is required, then i need to first install onto one of my mass storage disks, then update aliases, reboot/reconfigure, and only then can i install onto CF card. so, reboot with EON CD.