Add a blog post about mrsas(4)

_posts/2024-07-09-mister-sas.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Mr. Sas, here to save the day."
+tags:
+- freebsd
+- hardware
+- homelab
+---
+
+I have always been a technology scavenger, picking up cheap or disused
+computers for parts or tinkering. Last year when I picked up a
+_full-height_ server cabinet, a new world of rack-mountable junk finally became
+possible! One lucky Craigslist find ended up being an older 2U IBM xSeries server with
+8 drive sleds that was described as "sorta working" by the owner, who was
+shedding some extra stuff for his move across the country. I accepted the
+challenge, forked over a few
+[Jacksons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_twenty-dollar_bill), and
+brought the machine home.
+
+
+The thing about "server grade hardware" is that it never really is. The
+consumer grade stuff is junk, the small-medium business grade stuff is junk.
+It's all junk. Servers tend to have more redundancies to compensate, but at the
+end of the day: junk.
+
+Anyways, the seller had trouble getting the server to recognize more than one
+stick of RAM. I carefully unseated and reseated the RAM... and it just worked!
+
+Onto the next challenge, sometimes the machine wouldn't reboot. Somehow a cold boot, versus a "reboot" didn't work properly. I found [a critical problem in the IMM](https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/system-board-lighpath-led-warning-and-cpumem-vrd-fault-ibm-system-x) which could have resulted in me _bricking the board_ and upgraded the out-of-date firmware, dreading any potential triggering of the bug.
+
+I then fought against the RAID card, which really means I fought against the
+[Serial-Attached-SCSI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_Attached_SCSI)
+disks. Did you know that Serial-Attached-SCSI has a cable that's functionally
+compatible with SATA? Did you also know that SAS disks are obscenely expensive,
+while SATA SSDs are plentiful? The difference it turns out is largely in
+software and many SAS supporting devices also support SATA! 
+
+I wanted to boot directly into [FreeBSD](https://freebsd.org) via ZFS, with a
+nice array of SATA SSDs , but try as I might I could not get FreeBSD to boot
+consistently. Inevitiably
+[mfi(4)](https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=mfi&sektion=4&apropos=0&manpath=FreeBSD+14.1-RELEASE+and+Ports)
+errors would appear and the system would become unusable. There were so many goblins in this machine, I continued searching forums, StackOverflow, and random mailing list posts. Until I finally met **Mr. Sas.**
+
+From the
+[mrsas(4)](https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=mrsas&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+14.1-RELEASE+and+Ports&arch=default&format=html)
+man page:
+
+> Using `/boot/device.hints` (as mentioned below), the user can provide a
+> preference for the mrsas driver to detect a MR-Fusion card  instead  of the
+> mfi(4) driver.
+
+The `mfi(4)` driver and my hardware simply would _not_ cooperate, so I updated `/boot/loader.conf` with:
+
+```
+hw.mfi.mrsas_enable="1"
+```
+
+I crossed my fingers, blew the petals off a dandelion, clutched a lucky charm
+and rebooted the machine..
+
+
+...
+
+...
+
+
+As the machine POSTed and booted into FreeBSD I quietly waited for something _else_ to go wrong.
+
+
+But it didn't. 
+
+...
+
+
+How about that? It just worked.
+
+
+**Mr. Sas saved the day!**
+
+I have probably spent $1000 on upgrades for the machine, which was retired from
+some guy's garage for $100. In turn I've gotten _far more benefit_ from this
+goofy steel slap resting at the bottom of the rack.
+
+The machine has since had its disk capacity maxed out, it's been upgraded to
+136GB of RAM. It has become the central workhorse of my homelab: storing
+backups, hosting a dozen jails, and even a few VMs!
+
+None of which would have been possible without the friendly help of `mrsas(4)`.

tag/homelab.md

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+---
+layout: tag_page
+title: "Tag: homelab"
+tag: homelab
+robots: noindex
+---