Re: hot plugable?

[Ryan <rgb005@latech.edu>]

> All SATA HWIF chips support hot-swap (AFAIK), however, none are 
> supported under Linux because libata does not support it.  I think this 
> is what I said originally.  For some reason, libata supports everything 
> to do with power management, and nothing to do with hot-plugging.  =(

True, that.  Hotswap is part of the SATA standard, after all.  I just hope it
won't stay that way forever...

> It seems that particular hardware has premature support under Linux.  I 
> would be worried about disk compatibility with other 
> controllers/interfaces too, though I'm sure there are methods to 
> transfer your volumes over to a new controller, it would prolong and 
> complicate in place upgrades for people doing things on the cheap.

I'm not worried about this as it's not a production-level server and downtime is
of no consequence.  I'm willing to move my data to another location in order to
recreate the array if/when the necesary support becomes available.  Of course,
not having 240gb on any one machine other than the server really does
cmoplicate things...but I know people  >8)
 
> It may take some time for the SX4 to have mature support under Linux.  
> 3Ware is the only open-driver hardware that has a driver capable of 
> hotplug that I know of, but it gives dubious performance.  I pray for 
> the day libata does hot-swap so that I don't have to standardize on any 
> slow hardware platforms for hot-swap.    I'm excited about getting the 
> twin Raptors off the PCI bus/siimage and directly onto the 
> southbridge/sata_via.

I hope to see some progress toward that end.  Supposedly Promise is offering
support to kernel developers, but since I'm not involved with any kernel
development, much less libata, I don't know for sure.  We can only take the
developers' word for it and hope  >8)

> 
> -ryan
> 

-ryan

-- 
huh?

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