ATACONTROL(8)

NAME
atacontrol - ATA device driver control program

SYNOPSIS
atacontrol <command> args

atacontrol attach channel
atacontrol detach channel
atacontrol reinit channel
atacontrol create type [interleave] disk0 ... diskN
atacontrol delete raid
atacontrol addspare raid disk
atacontrol rebuild raid
atacontrol status raid
atacontrol mode device
atacontrol info channel
atacontrol cap device
atacontrol list

DESCRIPTION
The atacontrol utility is a control program that provides the user access and control to the FreeBSD ata(4) subsystem.

The atacontrol utility can cause severe system crashes and loss of data if used improperly. Please exercise caution when using this command!

The channel argument is the ATA channel device (e.g., ata0) on which to operate. The following commands are supported:

attach
    Attach an ATA channel. Devices on the channel are probed and attached as is done on boot.

detach
    Detach an ATA channel. Devices on the channel are removed from the kernel, and all outstanding transfers etc. are returned back to the system marked as failed.

reinit
    Reinitialize an ATA channel. Both devices on the channel are reset and initialized to the parameters the ATA driver has stored internally. Devices that have gone bad and no longer respond to the probe, or devices that have physically been removed, are removed from the kernel. Likewise are devices that show up during a reset, probed and attached.

create
    Create a type ATA RAID. The type can be RAID0 (stripe), RAID1 (mirror), RAID0+1, SPAN or JBOD. In case the RAID has a RAID0 component, the interleave must be specified in number of sectors. The RAID will be created of the individual disks named disk0 ... diskN.

    Although the ATA driver allows for creating an ATA RAID on disks with any controller, there are restrictions. It is only possible to boot on an array if it is either located on a “real” ATA RAID controller like the Promise or Highpoint controllers, or if the RAID declared is of RAID1 or SPAN type; in case of a SPAN, the partition to boot must reside on the first disk in the SPAN.

delete
    Delete a RAID array on a RAID capable ATA controller.

addspare
    Add a spare disk to an existing RAID.

rebuild
    Rebuild a RAID1 array on a RAID capable ATA controller.

status
    Get the status of an ATA RAID.

mode
    Without the mode argument, the current transfer modes of the device are printed. If the mode argument is given, the ATA driver is asked to change the transfer mode to the one given. The ATA driver will reject modes that are not supported by the hardware. Modes are given like “PIO3”, “udma2”, “udma100”, case does not matter.

    Currently supported modes are: PIO0, PIO1, PIO2, PIO3, PIO4, WDMA2, UDMA2 (alias UDMA33), UDMA4 (alias UDMA66), UDMA5 (alias UDMA100) and UDMA6 (alias UDMA133). The device name and manufacture/version strings are shown.

cap Show detailed info about the device on device.

info
    Show info about the attached devices on the channel.

list
    Show info about all attached devices on all active controllers.

EXAMPLES
To get information on devices attached to a channel, use the command line:

    atacontrol info ata0

To see the devices' current access modes, use the command line:

    atacontrol mode ad0

which results in the modes of the devices being displayed as a string like this:

    current mode = UDMA100

You can set the mode with atacontrol and a string like the above, for example:

    atacontrol mode ad0 PIO4

The new modes are set as soon as the atacontrol command returns.

SEE ALSO
ata(4)

HISTORY
The atacontrol utility first appeared in FreeBSD 4.6.

AUTHORS
-nosplit The atacontrol utility was written by Søren Schmidt <sos@FreeBSD.org>.

This manual page was written by Søren Schmidt <sos@FreeBSD.org>.