Update 4/28/08: I assume that these instructions still currently work with the latest version of GEOM RAID-5 and FreeBSD 7, however I have not tried them recently. I’ve been using ZFS :-) In order to get help with graid5, you may wish to check out the FreeNAS discussion lists, where I originally got help getting this software going on my hardware. FreeNAS also happens to be a great way to get geom raid-5 going on a machine if your plan is to use your array primarily as a NAS.
Quick and dirty page providing info on getting graid5 up and running on a FreeBSD box running current or near-current sources (6.1+?).
Quick Guide (originally provided by the author of GEOM Raid-5)
The newest stable package can be found here:
http://home.tiscali.de/cmdr_faako/geom_raid5.tbz
The fastest package can be found here:
http://home.tiscali.de/cmdr_faako/geom_raid5-eff.tbz
Install instructions (for both packages):
1. Unpack in /usr/src with “tar xjf <tar-ball>”
2. cd /usr/src/sys/modules/geom/geom_raid5 ; make ; cp geom_raid5.ko /boot/modules
3. cd /usr/src/sbin/geom/class/raid5 && make depend && make && make install
Revision History / Status
3/15/07: Fix for both versions for an issue in 2-disk configuration.
Known Issues
Notes
With some of the builds I’ve had a little trouble with one of the builds complaining of not being able to find the graid5 header. A fix for this (provided by the author) is as follows:
1. mkdir /usr/include/geom/raid5
2. cp /usr/src/sys/geom/raid5/g_raid5.h /usr/include/geom/raid5
