Its a Hardware Raid Array, specifically, LSI Logic MegaRAID SATA controller.

While booting, FreeBSD detects the array properly and sees it as one logical hard drive.

FreeBSD installs properly as well, but when I reboot I get the error message:

### START ERROR MESSAGE ###

Not ufs
Not ufs
No /boot/loader

FreeBSD/i386 boot
Default: 0:ad(0,a)/boot/kernel/kernel
boot:
Not ufs
no /boot/kernel/kernel

FreeBSD/i386 boot
Default: 0:ad(0,a)/boot/kernel/kernel
boot:

### END ERROR MESSAGE ###

And it wont boot into FreeBSD. It just stops there.

Any help would be much appreciated!

The Raid Array has three disks, all 80Gb. The stripe size is 64Kb, but I have also tried to install FreeBSD with the stripe size at 128Kb (the maximum my RAID controller supports) still with the same errors.

But interestingly, when I changed the stripe size to 128Kb, FreeBSD didn't give me the "Not ufs" error but just hung with the spinning "/".

Just as an extra, while booting into CD1 of the FreeBSD 6.1 install, I noticed that three lines appeared (once for each disk) that said the following:

lsiv3 > 2 disk support untested!


Does this mean that I cannot install FreeBSD on my hardware RAID controller?

Do you remember if FreeBSD saw your array as ad0 and that's where you installed it to? I have a feeling that it might not be looking at the right device to find the root filesystem. Of course, this is a hunch -- I don't have a hardware raid or experience with it.

The three disks are detected as ad4 ad6 and ad8. The RAID Array is detected as ar0 and the size (240Gb) is correct for the three disks.

FreeBSD gives me the options to install on the disks (ad[4,6,8]) OR on the array (ar0). I have tried installing it on just a disk and on the array but the same problem occurs.

To me, it seems as though FreeBSD doesn't know to look on the next disk for the next 128Kb of information, hence displaying the error "Not ufs" because it sees the disks individually and not as an array. But, then again, the install does seem to detect the array properly.

Its frustrating. I'm trying to get this server up and running ASAP because it is becoming my company's new database server. Does anyone know of a solution?

Try typing
At the prompt where it fails. That should boot it. Then, to make it stick, I'll have to get back to you on that. I'm sure it's just a matter of editing /boot/loader.conf but I forget how to do it.

Also note: from the prompt you can try lsdev to see all the possible devices (if for some reason ar isn't working).

Thankyou, I'll give that a try.

At the moment it's telling me there is no boot device, so I can't even see the boot prompt anymore. So I'll try and fix that first.

Nope, the solution you suggested didn't work. It just gave me one system beep and then displayed the boot prompt again.

When I type in 'lsdev' at the boot prompt it just says:

Not ufs
No lsdev

FreeBSD/i386 boot
Default: 0:ad(0,a)lsdev
boot:

Hmmm, what to do...

Interestingly, the suggestion you gave doesn't give me any "Not ufs" or "No /boot/kernel/kernel" errors. But it didn't boot into FreeBSD either.

After some more fiddling at the "boot:" prompt I have noticed that when I type in "ad(1,a)/boot/kernel/kernel" it gives me the error:

error 8 lba 0
No /boot/kernel/kernel

Is that anything significant? Or am I chasing shadows?

Well, if not hardware raid, then how do I set up software raid?