ATTO ExpressSAS RAID Controller OS X ReadMe Supported Adapters Supported Operating Systems Installation Instructions Driver Settings Driver Events Contact Info Supported Adapters ATTO ExpressSAS R380 ATTO ExpressSAS R348 Supported Operating Systems Mac OS X 10.4.2 and later for PCI Express PowerPC systems Mac OS X 10.4.7 and later for Intel systems Installation Instructions Note: If you already have one or more ExpressSAS adapters installed and you are installing additional adapters, you do NOT need to perform this procedure unless you are updating a previously installed driver. The driver may only be installed to the currently booted operating system. You must have system administrator privileges to perform driver installation. If you do not, you will be prompted for the username and password of a system adminstrator during the installation process. Double-click the OS X Installer package (*.pkg) to begin installation. Click 'Continue' to proceed through the installation wizard. When installation is complete, click 'Restart' to restart the system and load the driver. Driver Settings A system NVRAM variable, atto-args-esasraid, can be used to change the behavior of the ExpressSAS driver. The options are as follows:
-d | Disable the driver
-e [mask] | Specify the hexadecimal event mask for event logging. All event types are enabled by default. See the Driver Events section for more details.
-f | Load the driver in 'flash-only' mode. You will be able to use the ATTO Configuration Tool to update the adapter, but devices will not be visible.
Changing Driver Settings in OS X Open a Terminal window. At the prompt, enter the command 'sudo nvram atto-args-esasraid="[options]"' where [options] are listed above. If you are not the root user, you will be prompted for an administrator password. Reboot the system for the changes to take effect. Changing Driver Settings Using the Open Firmware User Interface (PowerPC systems only) Boot to the Open Firmware User Interface by pressing and holding Command+Option+O+F during boot. At the prompt, enter the command 'setenv atto-args-esasraid [options]' where [options] are listed above. At the prompt, enter the command 'mac-boot' to boot into OS X. Note: These options are stored in system NVRAM; therefore they persist across reboots. Resetting the system NVRAM by pressing and holding Command+Option+P+R during boot will remove the options. You can view the current options in OS X by opening a Terminal window and entering 'nvram atto-args-esasraid'. You can remove the options in OS X by opening a Terminal window and entering 'sudo nvram -d atto-args-esasraid'. Driver Events The reporting of driver events is controlled by the event mask driver setting. See the Driver Settings section for information on how to set this mask. The hexadecimal mask value is the sum of the event type values for the events you would like to see.
Event Type | Value (hexadecimal) | Description
Fatal | 0x00000001 | Fatal errors, always reported
SCSI | 0x00000004 | SCSI command errors
Protocol | 0x00000008 | SAS protocol errors
Discovery | 0x00000010 | Device discovery events
Resource | 0x00000040 | Resource usage failures
Info | 0x00000080 | Informational messages
Underflow | 0x00000800 | Data underflow errors
The ATTO ExpressSAS driver does not use the system log to communicate driver events to the user. The system log has very limited resources and events are easily lost. Instead, the driver logs events internally until they are retrieved using the ATTOExpressSASRAIDLog utility. This utility is installed to /System/Library/Extensions/ATTOExpressSASRAIDUtils. Although the number of events can never be predicted, the driver's internal event log should be large enough to hold all events from initial driver loading until ATTOExpressSASRAIDLog can be started. Should the event log become full, the driver will continue logging events while overwriting the earliest previously logged events. In other words, the event log will always be full with the most recent events. If event data has been lost, ATTOExpressSASRAIDLog will display "...Lost X bytes..." where X is the number of bytes lost. The ATTOExpressSASRAIDLog utility will continuously display events as they are logged by the driver. You can set the utility as a Startup Item to always retrieve events in the background; however, this may result in a slight performance degradation. Once events are retrieved and displayed, they can not be displayed again even if they are not overwritten by future events. if you want to save the events for future reference, save the terminal output or use standard redirection when starting ATTOExpressSASRAIDLog to save the output to a file. Each event begins with a channel identifier, Channel X.Y.Z, where X is the PCI bus number, Y is the PCI device number and Z is the PCI function number. Additional driver messages may be logged at driver load time before this information is available. In general, only errors that are output for event type 'Fatal' are significant; all others are mostly for informational or diagnostic purposes. When turning on event logging, be aware that certain events reported as errors are expected. For example, a SCSI Check Condition error will be reported for the first command sent to a device after power on or a reset condition. Also, certain data underrun errors are expected by the software and are normal. Contact Info You may receive customer service, sales information, and technical support by phone Monday through Friday, Eastern Standard Time 8:00 am to 8:00 pm, or by fax and web site 24 hours a day. ATTO Technology, Inc. 155 CrossPoint Parkway Amherst, New York 14068 Phone: (716) 691-1999 Fax: (716) 691-9353 www.attotech.com ATTO Technology can also be reached via e-mail at the following addresses: Sales Support: sls@attotech.com Technical Support: techsupp@attotech.com