Open (and Free) BSD with Jmicron 20339 USB <-> SATA II chipset

UNIX BSD
1

Hello!

Some time ago I did something stupid, I bought 4 harddisk cases (sata -> USB) without checking enough if it is supported by my choise of OS.
I was thinking of using FreeBSD on my new NAS (a sunblade 100), but after discovering that is didn't work, I started to search for information.
I found an article saying that Linux had som problems with Jmicron chipset, and this was also concerning FreeBSD (according to the information).

I then tried with OpenBSD, with more success than on FreeBSD, but not successfully enough.

Is there any one of you that knows more than me abouth this chipset and the BSD systems? Is there a way to get the disks to work?
And if not, is there anyone of you that know of a Linux Distribution that support the Jmicron 20339 chipset, AND have support for the sparc64 arcitecture?

I would appriciate any help you can give me, I'm getting desperate (and too much of my hair is turning grey now!).

Thanks in advance!

Ps.
And if someone answers "UBUNTU!" for the linux question, could you please tell me where to find an iso image? I havn't found any at all. =(
DS.

2

Please explain what you mean by "more, but not enough."

Did you submit a bug report to the OpenBSD developers, try to talk to the people who work on the sparc64 port, or the IDE layer? Their response when you are a cooperative user that supplies dmesgs and access to the hardware reportly is often to fix the problem.

Supplying the complete amount of information you can (a dmesg without the hardware that causes panics/freezes, or a dmesg from another operating system which does not have the error is better than no dmesg).

If it functions, but poorly, and you can get a developer who has similar or the same hardware available, and you've got the time to devote to it, you can usually work bugs out.

3

with "more, but not enough", i mean this:
On FreeBSD the dive is recognized by the system, as Dmesg shows something like this:

umass0 at uhub0 port 1 configuration 1 interface 0 "JMicron USB to ATA/ATAPI Bridge" rev 2.00/1.00 addr 3
umass0: using SCSI over Bulk-Only
scsibus1 at umass0: 2 targets
sd0 at scsibus1 targ 1 lun 0: <ST325041, 0AS, > SCSI2 0/direct fixed
sd0: 238475MB, 30401 cyl, 255 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sec, 488397168 sec total

(The above dmesg is actually from my newly installed OpenBSD, but its very similar (if not even exactly the same)
and usbdevs shows:

[root@germany /home/noratx]# usbdevs
addr 1: OHCI root hub, (0x108e)
 addr 2: Dell USB Keyboard, Dell
 addr 3: USB to ATA/ATAPI Bridge, JMicron

But it stops there, the only device I get in FreeBSD under /dev is "sd0", nothing more.

In OpenBSD, I can actually use disklabel and create a new partition, BUT, when i want to mount it, this is what I get:

# disklabel sd0
# /dev/rsd0c:
type: SCSI
disk: SCSI disk
label: 0AS
flags: vendor
bytes/sector: 512
sectors/track: 63
tracks/cylinder: 255
sectors/cylinder: 16065
cylinders: 30401
total sectors: 488397168
rpm: 3600
interleave: 1
trackskew: 0
cylinderskew: 0
headswitch: 0           # microseconds
track-to-track seek: 0  # microseconds
drivedata: 0

16 partitions:
#                size           offset  fstype [fsize bsize  cpg]
  a:        488392065                0  4.2BSD   2048 16384    1
  c:        488397168                0  unused      0     0
# mount /dev/sd0a /share/250GB-1/
mount_ffs: /dev/sd0a on /share/250GB-1: Invalid argument

So, drive recognized, I'm able to partition (obviously), but not able to mount the disk.
Allthough, maybe this is just something I have missed, but I don't know what that could be.

Edit:
YES! I was stupid and missed one vital thing...
After using disklabel, I maybe should have used newfs.. :o (Here I miss a smiley with a big hand comming and smacking the forhead)... BAH!
Well, after waiting forever for OpenBSD to run newfs on my 250 GB disk, it now works.. just the way it should.
I just wish that it fould work under FreeBSD (7.0) as well, But OpenBSD is anyway better than Linux (IMHO).
Now I'm finally happy again! Thank you, and sorry for beeing a bit stupid. :o