OpenBSD Journal

Call for Donations - PCIe Capable Machine for RAID HW Development

Contributed by dwc on from the help-openbsd-help-you dept.

Update (Jan 31 2008, 00:06:28 CET): We have reached our goal. Thanks to everyone who donated and a special thanks to Navan Carson who went to great lengths to complete his donation.

Again, thanks for making it possible for Marco to support PCIe RAID HW.

Please continue to support your favorite OS here.

----

Johan M:son Lindman writes:

Recently the switch from PCI to PCI Express has become very apparent in the RAID hardware segment. Most new RAID hardware is developed using the PCIe bus.

Marco Peereboom (marco@) one of OpenBSD primary RAID hardware developers needs a PCIe system to be able to add support for controllers such as the Dell PERC 6i in the mfi(4) driver. Additionally Marco will be working on adding support for new Fusion-MPT controllers in mpi(4), QLogic controllers in isp(4)/qli(4) as well as fixing bugs and maintaining other RAID drivers.

The system we are looking at is a Dell PE T105 server which has plenty of slots to add various PCIe equipment. This system with options will cost US $800 including shipping so we are asking for donations to that amount.

Marco has asked that I handle the donations, hence please send your donation via paypal to my account jl@btradianz.se.

Thanks for helping OpenBSD.

(Comments are closed)

Comments

  1. By Anonymous Coward (85.179.82.25) on

    Well if the community can afford this: Spend more so he might even buys MORE RAM (>4GB) to may solve this limitation as well! :-)

    Comments

    1. By sthen (85.158.45.32) on

      > Well if the community can afford this: Spend more so he might even buys MORE RAM (>4GB) to may solve this limitation as well! :-)

      toby has a memory loading diff that needs wide testing on amd64. this is from his message to tech@:

      "This is a diff to help move amd64 towards being able to support more
      memory. We need this tested on a WIDE variety of machines. It should
      not change anything with respect to the amount of memory you see (this
      will not make more than 4GB appear), but it will help us get ready for
      the large memory machines in the future.

      This needs testing. So it can go in soon. Test this, and send me
      the dmesg's."

      http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=120124341330272&w=2

      Comments

      1. By friendly tester :) (83.236.54.40) on

        testing this on amd64 machines with <=4Gig will also yield meaningful dmesgs?

        Comments

        1. By sthen (85.158.44.158) on http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=uk&l=en&cs=ukdhs1&kc=&oc=PE1T1052

          > testing this on amd64 machines with <=4Gig will also yield meaningful dmesgs?

          yes, definitely. it changes how memory is detected on all amd64 machines, so it's important to check that it doesn't break something which works today.

          according to the explanatory comments included in machdep.c after patching, the legacy methods are "usually only describing the lower 4GB of memory" so you can see how it's going to be useful for >4GB support.

          but let's not hijack this undeadly article too much - Marco needs a PCIE machine for RAID support not >4GB, other people are working on that.

  2. By Anonymous Coward (194.251.240.114) on

    What are the non-paypal options?

    Comments

    1. By Johan M:son Lindman (jl) on

      > What are the non-paypal options?

      Unfortunately for this campaign we do not have any.

      But if you are willing to donate OpenBSD at large still needs your donation so I urge you to go to the below URL and look up an alternate method of donation, albeit not for this specific cause.

      http://www.openbsd.org/donations.html

      Thanks.

    2. By wim (88.82.33.37) wim@openbsd.org on http://www.openbsd.org/bank-donation.html

      > What are the non-paypal options?

      If you are in Europe, you can wire it to the IBAN donation account
      with a reference to this donation drive and I'll transfer it with
      a credit card to the paypal account

  3. By Dennis van Zuijlekom (82.93.30.80) t m i b AT x s 4 a l l DOT n l on

    Just donated a couple of bucks. Hope you'll be able to get a nice deal on the Dell server.

  4. By Damir Musulin (dmusulin2) dmusulin@gmail.com on

    @ Wim (wim@openbsd.org)

    I donated some cash to you for this server can you tell me if you got it?

    @ Johan M:son Lindman

    How Much did you get so far?(progress bar?)


    @ Marco Peereboom

    If you get the server we want to see some pictures here on undealy.org
    (i want to see the result! i payed for the pictures :P )

    I hope you'll get the server !!!!!

    And keep up the good work with the raid stuff can't wait to say goodbye to
    Raidframe!

    Damir Musulin

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (24.37.242.64) on

      > @ Wim (wim@openbsd.org)
      >
      > I donated some cash to you for this server can you tell me if you got it?
      >
      > @ Johan M:son Lindman
      >
      > How Much did you get so far?(progress bar?)
      >
      >
      > @ Marco Peereboom
      >
      > If you get the server we want to see some pictures here on undealy.org
      > (i want to see the result! i payed for the pictures :P )
      >
      > I hope you'll get the server !!!!!
      >
      > And keep up the good work with the raid stuff can't wait to say goodbye to
      > Raidframe!
      >
      > Damir Musulin

      http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/pedge_t105?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

      Now if only Dell could have donated one, for $800.00 they're not expensive at all.

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (85.178.72.61) on

        > > @ Wim (wim@openbsd.org)
        > >
        > > I donated some cash to you for this server can you tell me if you got it?
        > >
        > > @ Johan M:son Lindman
        > >
        > > How Much did you get so far?(progress bar?)
        > >
        > >
        > > @ Marco Peereboom
        > >
        > > If you get the server we want to see some pictures here on undealy.org
        > > (i want to see the result! i payed for the pictures :P )
        > >
        > > I hope you'll get the server !!!!!
        > >
        > > And keep up the good work with the raid stuff can't wait to say goodbye to
        > > Raidframe!
        > >
        > > Damir Musulin
        >
        > http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/pedge_t105?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd
        >
        > Now if only Dell could have donated one, for $800.00 they're not expensive at all.

        Well did somebody asked them?

  5. By Anonymous Coward (24.37.242.64) on

    What did Navan do? :)

    Enquiring minds want to know...

    Comments

    1. By Bayu Krisnawan (222.124.156.122) krisna@versalite.com on http://www.infobsd.org

      > What did Navan do? :)
      >
      > Enquiring minds want to know...
      >

      I think, he donating that hardware.
      Thanks Navan.

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