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Success booting off 3Ware 9650SE RAID controller


justroach
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Just thought I'd share my experience here. I have a 9650 3Ware card that I have been dying to boot off of. Initially I had a separate drive hooked directly to the motherboard and used the uphuck 1.3 install. From there I installed the 3ware drivers available from their website (look for the Sidecar Drivers.) I did the following to boot (all commands run as root/sudo):

 

1. Mounted the uphuck ISO read/write.

2. Copied the Extensions.mkext file out of the uphuck ISO.

3. Used mkextunpack to split the Extensions.mkext file out into it's separate files.

4. Added the AMCC driver available from the 3ware image mentioned above (packages->drivers->macos->Intel->AMCC3ware9000.kext.)

5. Used kextcache to make a new Extensions.mkext file.

6. Copied the new Extensions.mkext file back into the uphuck ISO.

7. umounted the the ISO. Burned it.

8. Once booted I was able to see the 3ware RAID 10 I had created.

9. Partitioned as MBR, but newfs complained about not divisible by 4.

10. Fired up fdisk, took the size of the partition, divided by 4, dropped the decimals places and created a new partition flagged to boot.

11. Back in Disk Utility formatted the partition as HFS+ Journaled.

12. Back to the installer for an install.

13. Booted back up off of the single drive, ran a quick repair permissions on the RAID array and then ran the 3ware installer on the RAID array.

14. Reboot after some BIOS changes onto the array!

15. Profit.

 

Anyhoo, I suppose that making a package out of the 3ware installer and adding that to the install DVD would be better, but I haven't gotten that excited yet. :D I would recommend that anyone making any new install DVDs add the 3ware driver and the 3ware package as an option as it makes for a wicked fast disk. This also works with the PCI-X cards (at least the 9550.) YMMV, thanks for all the great posts that helped me along.

 

FWIW my specs:

Intel Starlake MB respin for 45nm support

2x3.2GHz Quad-core 45nm procs

32GB RAM

6x1TB Seagate SATA drives RAID 10 off of 3ware 9650SE-8LPML

st00pid loud case :D

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  • 2 weeks later...
Just thought I'd share my experience here. I have a 9650 3Ware card that I have been dying to boot off of. Initially I had a separate drive hooked directly to the motherboard and used the uphuck 1.3 install. From there I installed the 3ware drivers available from their website (look for the Sidecar Drivers.) I did the following to boot (all commands run as root/sudo):

 

1. Mounted the uphuck ISO read/write.

2. Copied the Extensions.mkext file out of the uphuck ISO.

3. Used mkextunpack to split the Extensions.mkext file out into it's separate files.

4. Added the AMCC driver available from the 3ware image mentioned above (packages->drivers->macos->Intel->AMCC3ware9000.kext.)

5. Used kextcache to make a new Extensions.mkext file.

6. Copied the new Extensions.mkext file back into the uphuck ISO.

7. umounted the the ISO. Burned it.

8. Once booted I was able to see the 3ware RAID 10 I had created.

9. Partitioned as MBR, but newfs complained about not divisible by 4.

10. Fired up fdisk, took the size of the partition, divided by 4, dropped the decimals places and created a new partition flagged to boot.

11. Back in Disk Utility formatted the partition as HFS+ Journaled.

12. Back to the installer for an install.

13. Booted back up off of the single drive, ran a quick repair permissions on the RAID array and then ran the 3ware installer on the RAID array.

14. Reboot after some BIOS changes onto the array!

15. Profit.

 

Anyhoo, I suppose that making a package out of the 3ware installer and adding that to the install DVD would be better, but I haven't gotten that excited yet. :) I would recommend that anyone making any new install DVDs add the 3ware driver and the 3ware package as an option as it makes for a wicked fast disk. This also works with the PCI-X cards (at least the 9550.) YMMV, thanks for all the great posts that helped me along.

 

FWIW my specs:

Intel Starlake MB respin for 45nm support

2x3.2GHz Quad-core 45nm procs

32GB RAM

6x1TB Seagate SATA drives RAID 10 off of 3ware 9650SE-8LPML

st00pid loud case :unsure:

What is ur mobo? I guess that you are using Intel Xeons? Are the 45nm Xeons allready out? Is it a server system or what?

U do video editing?

 

Btw very nice of you... :)

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  • 4 months later...

@justroach

 

I also have this raid card, but I don't want to boot off of it.

 

Would I just have to add the AMCC3ware9000.kext after my osx install to get Leopard to see my raid? I shouldn't have to do everything you did since I don't want to boot from the raid? Right??? :)

 

Thanks!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have a 9650SE 8 port card too - tried simply copying the KEXT file to the extensions folder - that didn't work. Then installed it using these instructions here:

 

http://grafikdesign.wordpress.com/2008/02/...ll-a-kext-file/

 

WOrked! :)

 

I can now see a single drive attached to the controller but not my RAID0 AV array - but this maybe to do with how it's setup in XP?

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  • 4 weeks later...

Justroach - good work, a great success! I have a Raid 5 array running on a 9650 under my XP installation, NTFS obviously, that'd I love to see under 10.5.2. As I don't need to boot off it, I tried installing the Sidecar drivers from AMCC's site. They installed successfully but OSX still can't see my drives...any ideas?

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Justroach - good work, a great success! I have a Raid 5 array running on a 9650 under my XP installation, NTFS obviously, that'd I love to see under 10.5.2. As I don't need to boot off it, I tried installing the Sidecar drivers from AMCC's site. They installed successfully but OSX still can't see my drives...any ideas?

 

I just found this thread today and got my 9650SE working in 10.5.2. I downloaded the installer image from 3ware's site but then I just installed the .kext file. It is located inside the image at /packages/drivers/macos/intel/AMCC3ware9000.kext. I used Kext Helper b7 to install the kext. It took about 15 seconds after installing the kext for my Raid 5 to show up :) All 3tb of raid goodness is available in my OS X install now :D:P:P

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  • 3 weeks later...

This is VERY interesting. A couple quick questions: Do you all suppose that this will work with all 9000 series cards? And for those running this setup right now, what's the performance like in OS X?

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  • 3 months later...

@eleazar -> pretty nice drive collection

 

any one have recommendations on a cheaper raid controller than the 9650SE?

 

also, what is the highest number of working SATA connections on a motherboard one can hope for? which boards are the best bets? ...would be nice to not have the expense of the controller card, but then again a cheaper motherboard would free up some money for one.

 

thanks!

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  • 3 weeks later...

I just got my older 9590SE 8 port SATA (PCIe 4x) running with the sidecar drivers.

 

It looks like many of the 3ware cards share the same device id/drivers.

For instance the 9590SE I have has the same device id as a 9550.

 

The device ID's that are supported in the 3ware 9000 kext are:

 

Vendor: 0x13c1

DevID: 0x1002, 0x1003, 0x1004.

 

0x1002 = 9000 Series

0x1003 = 9550SX / 9590SE Series

0x1004 = 9650SE Series

 

If you don't have a 3ware card on hand to check you might need to google around a bit to see what device id a particular one uses.

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  • 5 months later...

The tutorial here: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...mp;#entry481427 is good if your new to adding drivers to a leopard dvd(like me). The tutorial steps you through the process, you only need two extra things to be able to use his method... transmac(an app) and a windows pc to run it on. I tried to add drivers to extensions.mkext on leopard dvds and failed hard, but this tut is good :(

Btw thx for the heads up on a compatible raid card to buy for osx justroach, your a champ.

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  • 10 months later...
I have 3ware 9500S card on pci 8, (id 0x100213c1), snow leo 10.6.2 hack: p5q-pro, e8500

I install AMCC3ware9000.kext by kexthelper, and nothing happens

 

Someone know solution, or any ideas?

 

I do not think the 9500s is compatible with OS X. Can anyone confirm this or indicate if they have it working with 9500s?

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  • 4 weeks later...

I bought the 9650SE-4LPML as a result of reading this thread, and the card works great. I slipped the kext in and everything works, is bootable, etc etc.

 

Now, how do I get the raid units to show up as internal drives? I've attempted to modify the Info.plist files inside the kext after reading a similar thread for a HP raid array (http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=183101) but I was unable to get it to work.

 

 

Any ideas?

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I bought the 9650SE-4LPML as a result of reading this thread, and the card works great. I slipped the kext in and everything works, is bootable, etc etc.

 

Now, how do I get the raid units to show up as internal drives? I've attempted to modify the Info.plist files inside the kext after reading a similar thread for a HP raid array (http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=183101) but I was unable to get it to work.

 

 

Any ideas?

 

Is it working in 64bit mode?

 

Thanks

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  • 8 months later...

Hello,

 

I'm attempting a 10.5 install with the following hardware:

 

9650SE_2LP

Winfast mobo

Q6600

2x - 2 GB Kingston DDR2 667 SDRAM

 

I booted up into an existing Leopard installation, and ran OSInstall.mpkg from the Leopard DVD on the RAID-0 volume I created. The installation finishes without an issue. Before rebooting into the new installation, I installed (via Uinstaller) the 3Ware 9000 series driver from their website. For some reason upon a reboot, the boot cycle hangs at "Waiting for root device" -- is there a step I'm missing? Can I not install a bootable OS X installation on a 9650SE-2LP card in the way I mentioned?

 

Here are the errors I receive from a verbose boot attempt...

 

Driver version: AMCC3Ware9000.kext from 3Ware website (9.5.3 complete mac code set)

 

err.jpg

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I have finally got my desktop to boot retail Leopard 10.5.8 from the 9650SE-2LP RAID-0 volume. This was achieved by specifying the boot-uuid parameter in com.apple.Boot.plist.

 

Has anyone experienced any issues with this controller series resulting in full computer freezes? My video signal will still exist, but there's no keyboard input at any given time for these occurrences. I was not having these freezes on a previous, single HDD installation of the same OS version/extensions, so I don't believe this is a general hardware issue.

 

If it recurs I might end up swapping the controller for another one of the same specification to rule out the individual controller as faulty.

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I have finally got my desktop to boot retail Leopard 10.5.8 from the 9650SE-2LP RAID-0 volume. This was achieved by specifying the boot-uuid parameter in com.apple.Boot.plist.

 

Has anyone experienced any issues with this controller series resulting in full computer freezes? My video signal will still exist, but there's no keyboard input at any given time for these occurrences. I was not having these freezes on a previous, single HDD installation of the same OS version/extensions, so I don't believe this is a general hardware issue.

 

If it recurs I might end up swapping the controller for another one of the same specification to rule out the individual controller as faulty.

 

Sorry for not replying sooner :yoji:. I have been running multiple systems with the 9650 and the 9550 without any such freezes. I ran into that same issue before, but never got it working with the UUID. Nice to know that that is a potential fix.

 

FWIW I run the 9650s on Tyan S5397 and Intel S5000XVNs. The 9550s are on Intel SE7520BB2s and a StupidMicro X7DBE.

 

You try ssh-ing to the box and tailing /var/log/system.log during a crash?

 

Also, why not 10.6?

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Sorry for not replying sooner ;) . I have been running multiple systems with the 9650 and the 9550 without any such freezes. I ran into that same issue before, but never got it working with the UUID. Nice to know that that is a potential fix.

 

FWIW I run the 9650s on Tyan S5397 and Intel S5000XVNs. The 9550s are on Intel SE7520BB2s and a StupidMicro X7DBE.

 

You try ssh-ing to the box and tailing /var/log/system.log during a crash?

 

-- I have not tried this, but I certainly will the next time it occurs.

 

Why not 10.6? Well, the motherboard I'm using is fairly old, as it's a Foxconn 946GZ7MA. I don't believe it'd be an easy task to get SL up and running on it, and I was intent on having my boot drive as a RAID-0 hardware array. Once I have time and become more adventurous I might look into the SL route. : P

 

"and a StupidMicro X7DBE."

 

Haha, "StupidMicro" -- you have an OS X installation on the X7DBE? I'm assuming you had to use an add-on sound card... which one did you go with? How's the OS X support for the X7DBE?

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Haha, "StupidMicro" -- you have an OS X installation on the X7DBE? I'm assuming you had to use an add-on sound card... which one did you go with? How's the OS X support for the X7DBE?

 

It is used as a server so no sound card. The NICs and SATA are supported out of the box so no issues there.

 

FWIW Snow Leopard and Leopard are nearly identical in terms of getting them to work in my experience. The only time I have seen something not work with Snow Leopard was when I was trying to get it running on a machine with 34-bit memory addressing. Snow Leopard can't seem to see those extra 2 bits.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello,

 

So on my 9650SE-2LP installation I have noticed that upon a reboot sometimes OS X will kernel panic and not finish the boot process. The offending kext is the following:

 

noc:~ root# kextstat | grep musa

74 0 0x46269000 0x7000 0x6000 com.musashi.skge (1.0.0) <73 17 12 2>

 

I couldn't find that file anywhere on my system...

 

noc:~ root# find / -name "com.musashi.skge"

noc:~ root#

 

What is 'com'musashi.skge' used for? I installed Leopard from a retail disk.

 

System Version: Mac OS X 10.5.8 (9L31a)

Kernel Version: Darwin 9.8.0

 

What's weird is how sporadic the kernel panic is... about 3/4 time I can reboot and have the system come back up without an issue.

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