# Will version 7.1 drivers work on the latest release?



## Devicifer (Jul 15, 2013)

I have a SuperTrak EX16650 RAID card that *I* want to use, but the latest driver was made for 7.1 and *I* don't have much experience with bsd FreeBSD. Is there a chance it would work?


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## mav@ (Jul 15, 2013)

In general case binary compatibility between major releases like 7.x and 8.x/9.x is not guaranteed. How big real chances are there depends on which KPIs the driver uses and whether they have changed. If driver requirements are really minimal, there are chances, otherwise...


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## Devicifer (Jul 15, 2013)

If you were in this situation, would you try it or be too afraid of losing valuable data?


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## fonz (Jul 15, 2013)

Devicifer said:
			
		

> or be too afraid of losing valuable data?


There are two kinds of people: those who have learned - usually the hard way - the importance of (tested) backups and those who have yet to learn it


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## mav@ (Jul 15, 2013)

It depends on what kind of specific KPI change. Maybe the kernel module just won't load, if some function names changed, etc. May be it will not work as expected, if function arguments or structure sizes changed. And yes, valuable data must be backed up in any case.


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## SirDice (Jul 16, 2013)

They also seem to have a driver for 8.2. That may work on 8.4. Although I have no idea why it's called "Miracle Linux FreeBSD 8.2 driver".

http://www.promise.com/support/download.aspx?m=205&region=en-US&rsn1=19


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## wblock@ (Jul 16, 2013)

Why not just ask the vendor?


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## Devicifer (Jul 16, 2013)

You just saved me a lot of trouble @SirDice! Thank you! I hadn't thought that the Promise website would have an out of date downloads page that isn't updated anymore. The link you provided is new to me and pretty much solves my problem. Thanks again!


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## Terry_Kennedy (Jul 16, 2013)

mav@ said:
			
		

> In general case binary compatibility between major releases like 7.x and 8.x/9.x is not guaranteed. How big real chances are there depends on which KPIs the driver uses and whether they have changed. If driver requirements are really minimal, there are chances, otherwise...


If the driver is provide_d_ in source form, you can also try rebuilding it, either as a standalone module or hooked into the normal kernel build process. I've done this with a network card driver listed as "FreeBSD 7.2 or newer".

On the other hand, we should encourage hardware manufacturers to offer up-to-date support for FreeBSD, either as a vendor-supplied driver or by contributing updates to the FreeBSD source tree. Making sure they know we're buying their product because of their FreeBSD support. LSI Logic and Intel are some examples of hardware vendors who provide excellent FreeBSD support.


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## Devicifer (Jul 16, 2013)

Indeed. I was actually a Windows guy back when I bought the card. It worked fine on Windows and still does. I'm moving away from Windows, however. I could never get the experience that I wanted on the desktop, with open source, and Mac wasn't an option because of software limitations and my perception of it. But then I tried a Mac and now I'm ditching my Windows boxes and trying to get a FreeBSD based OS up and running on the server.

My coworkers never seem to tire of my matter-of-fact opinion that Windows is a game console and Xbox is a game controller that you plug into the Windows game console. They pointed out that our employer gives up Windows boxes to do our work on, but I figured that made perfect sense, given the games they play with us...


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## Devicifer (Jul 17, 2013)

Tonight I got FreeNAS 8 installed, and the driver loaded. I have so far installed the Windows NTFS drive under CIFS and started playing with it. I just wanted to see if it was going to work and make sure that the drive wasn't going to be corrupt. I also got the driver installed for the SuperTrak card and the NTFS volume is visible to the operating system. It all looks like a great success to me. Thanks for all your help guys.


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## DutchDaemon (Jul 17, 2013)

Disclaimer: topics about PC-BSD, DesktopBSD, *FreeNAS*, NAS4Free, m0N0WALL, pfSense, ArchBSD, kFreeBSD, JabirOS.


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## Devicifer (Jul 17, 2013)

LOL, thanks for the link! That was my next stop 

Their CIFS server doesn't work very well and I have to go question and complain now.


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## Devicifer (Jul 18, 2013)

You might want to add something to that disclaimer. Maybe something like this:

Disclaimer: topics about PC-BSD, DesktopBSD, FreeNAS, NAS4Free, m0N0WALL, pfSense, ArchBSD, kFreeBSD, JabirOS.
Disowner: In addition, FreeNAS is an embarrassment to FreeBSD, due to the large scale victimizing of innocent users.

I tried to sign up for their forums at work, on my phone, and at home and failed every time. Apparently, they're using a system to block spam that blocks massive audiences of real users, in the interest of stopping bots and the like. Does the RIAA run FreeNAS? If I were in your shoes, I would completely disown them and suggest other FreeBSD based alternatives. I don't know what that would be, however, since I gave ClearOS (Linux) a try and it works great. Bye bye BSD.


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## DutchDaemon (Jul 18, 2013)

Okido. A well-informed decision, obviously. Closed.


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