# FreeBSD 9.2 install failure



## KernelPanic (Oct 18, 2013)

I have an older Promise FastTrak S150TX2 Plus. I recently tried to upgrade a system from FreeBSD 8.4 to FreeBSD 9.2 which completely blew up the system. It wouldn't boot, leaving me at the boot prompt. Any attempt to boot of the RAID volume resulted in an error 19. My searches of this forum and the Internet seem to indicate this is an unknown error that doesn't have a fix.

I then attempted to rebuild the server from scratch and it appears that FreeBSD 9.2 install CD does not function properly with the RAID card. Upon booting, FreeBSD seems to do some sort of scan/read of the local harddrives that upon doing so, immediately causes the controller to kick whichever member is accessed first (usually ada0) out of the RAID.

Furthermore I get all sorts of errors on both sub-members of the RAID mirror when I  attempt to set up partitions on the raid volume (raid/r0) it spews all sorts of errors about both drives:


```
GEOM_RAID: Read error (5), 129 read errors total ada0[READ(offset=20992), length=512)]
```

On the debugging screen I see that gpart complains that it could not set up partcode on the raid/r0p1 partition due to input/output errors.

I've confirmed in a second computer that all drives are healthy/operational.


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## SirDice (Oct 18, 2013)

I would suggest not using the card's RAID and use graid(8), gmirror(8) or ZFS.


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## KernelPanic (Oct 18, 2013)

I'm guessing this is due to GEOM doing naughty things it shouldn't to GPT?

Are gmirror and GPT still incompatible? I believe they both try to store their metadata in the same location?


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## wblock@ (Oct 18, 2013)

KernelPanic said:
			
		

> I'm guessing this is due to GEOM doing naughty things it shouldn't to GPT?



No.  GEOM_RAID is graid(8).  The BIOS boots from that volume, and the rest is up to the operating system.  The GEOM_RAID kernel module sees the RAID metadata on the disk and realizes it is a RAID.  The error message shows read errors.  I would boot mfsBSD and run the SMART long test on both drives (`smartctl -t long /dev/ada0`, monitored with `smartctl -a /dev/ada0`).



> Are gmirror and GPT still incompatible? I believe they both try to store their metadata in the same location?



Yes, but that is not the problem here.  GPT will work on a graid(8) array, because the RAID metadata is outside of the device.  The backup GPT can be written to the last block of the array without conflict.


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## KernelPanic (Oct 18, 2013)

I tried a gmirror and unfortunately the system won't boot from the RAID card if there isn't a volume defined. I think I'm stuck with FreeBSD 8.4 until I can buy all new hardware. This stuff is all very old.


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