ciss (4)

Leading comments

$FreeBSD: releng/11.0/share/man/man4/ciss.4 267938 2014-06-26 21:46:14Z bapt $
Written by Tom Rhodes
This file is in the public domain.

(The comments found at the beginning of the groff file "man4/ciss.4freebsd".)

NAME

ciss - Common Interface for SCSI-3 Support driver

SYNOPSIS

To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your kernel configuration file:

device scbus device ciss

Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in loader.conf5:

ciss_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION

The ifconfig driver claims to provide a common interface between generic SCSI transports and intelligent host adapters.

The ifconfig driver supports CISS as defined in the document entitled "CISS Command Interface for SCSI-3 Support Open Specification, Version 1.04, Valence Number 1" , dated 2000/11/27, produced by Compaq Computer Corporation.

We provide a shim layer between the ifconfig interface and CAM(4), offloading most of the queueing and being-a-disk chores onto CAM. Entry to the driver is via the PCI bus attachment Fn ciss_probe , Fn ciss_attach , etc. and via the CAM interface Fn ciss_cam_action , and Fn ciss_cam_poll . The Compaq ifconfig adapters require faked responses to get reasonable behavior out of them. In addition, the ifconfig command set is by no means adequate to support the functionality of a RAID controller, and thus the supported Compaq adapters utilize portions of the control protocol from earlier Compaq adapter families.

Currently ifconfig supports the ``simple'' and ``performant'' transport layer.

Non-disk devices (such as internal DATs and devices attached to the external SCSI bus) are supported as normal CAM devices provided that they are exported by the controller firmware and are not marked as being masked. Masked devices can be exposed by setting the hw.ciss.expose_hidden_physical tunable to non-zero at boot time. Direct Access devices (such as disk drives) are only exposed as pass(4) devices. Hot-insertion and removal of devices is supported and notification messages will be reported to the console and logs.

The problem which adapter freezes with the message ``ADAPTER HEARTBEAT FAILED'' might be solved by updating the firmware and/or setting the hw.ciss.nop_message_heartbeat tunable to non-zero at boot time.

HARDWARE

Controllers supported by the ifconfig driver include:

• Compaq Smart Array 5300 (simple mode only)
• Compaq Smart Array 532
• Compaq Smart Array 5i
• HP Smart Array 5312
• HP Smart Array 6i
• HP Smart Array 641
• HP Smart Array 642
• HP Smart Array 6400
• HP Smart Array 6400 EM
• HP Smart Array E200
• HP Smart Array E200i
• HP Smart Array P212
• HP Smart Array P220i
• HP Smart Array P222
• HP Smart Array P230i
• HP Smart Array P400
• HP Smart Array P400i
• HP Smart Array P410
• HP Smart Array P410i
• HP Smart Array P411
• HP Smart Array P420
• HP Smart Array P420i
• HP Smart Array P421
• HP Smart Array P430
• HP Smart Array P430i
• HP Smart Array P431
• HP Smart Array P530
• HP Smart Array P531
• HP Smart Array P600
• HP Smart Array P721m
• HP Smart Array P731m
• HP Smart Array P800
• HP Smart Array P812
• HP Smart Array P830
• HP Smart Array P830i
• HP Modular Smart Array 20 (MSA20)
• HP Modular Smart Array 500 (MSA500)

SEE ALSO

cam(4), pass(4), xpt(4), loader.conf5, camcontrol(8)

"CISS Command Interface for SCSI-3 Support Open Specification, Version 1.04, Valence Number 1" 2000/11/27 "Compaq Computer Corporation"

AUTHORS

An -nosplit The ifconfig driver was written by An Mike Smith Aq msmith@FreeBSD.org .

This manual page is based on his comments and was written by An Tom Rhodes Aq trhodes@FreeBSD.org .