Call For Testers - mpi(4) is getting bio support

Marco Peereboom (marco@) wrote to tech asking users to test the recently added but still disabled bio(4) support for mpi(4) RAID controllers. To test this new functionality in -current, enable it by applying Marco's simple diff to a recent source tree.

Read on for more details.

This family of relatively inexpensive storage interfaces is becoming very popular and extending the existing bio(4) management interface to them will be very handy. If you would like to see it enabled, please test and report if it works for you!

Your output should look similar to this:

# bioctl mpi0
Volume  Status               Size Device
 mpi0 0 Online       399999237632 sd0     RAID1
      0 Online       400088456704 0:9.0   noencl <ATA     Hitachi HDT72504A7EA>
      1 Online       400088456704 0:6.0   noencl <ATA     Hitachi HDT72504A7EA>
 mpi0 1 Online       399999237632 sd1     RAID1
      0 Online       400088456704 0:2.0   noencl <ATA     Hitachi HDT72504A7EA>
      1 Online       400088456704 0:1.0   noencl <ATA     Hitachi HDT72504A7EA>

And here is the diff that enables mpi bio support on -current:

Index: mpi.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/src/sys/dev/ic/mpi.c,v
retrieving revision 1.104
diff -u -p -u -p -r1.104 mpi.c
--- mpi.c	3 Nov 2008 01:42:15 -0000	1.104
+++ mpi.c	3 Nov 2008 01:43:44 -0000
@@ -288,7 +288,7 @@ mpi_attach(struct mpi_softc *sc)
 	/* enable interrupts */
 	mpi_write(sc, MPI_INTR_MASK, MPI_INTR_MASK_DOORBELL);
 
-#ifdef notyet
+//#ifdef notyet
 #if NBIO > 0
 	if (sc->sc_flags & MPI_F_RAID) {
 		if (bio_register(&sc->sc_dev, mpi_ioctl) != 0)
@@ -319,7 +319,7 @@ mpi_attach(struct mpi_softc *sc)
 #endif /* SMALL_KERNEL */
 done:
 #endif /* NBIO > 0 */
-#endif /* notyet */
+//#endif /* notyet */

On a related note, Marco also recently committed multiple fixes to the bio(4) interface of another RAID driver, mfi(4). If you have one of those RAID controllers and follow -current, please test the behavior of the bioctl management tool - especially with unusual or complex disk setups.