FreeBSD Support

Note: FreeBSD support was originally added by CORAID in 2004. Due to low adoption in the FreeBSD community, maintenance and support of the driver was passed to the community in 2006 and is currently maintained by Stacey D. Son. He can be reached at stacey@son.org. CORAID maintains the following information as provided by Stacey for installation of the FreeBSD driver. The remaining information for older drivers and using AoE on FreeBSD were authored by CORAID.

FreeBSD AoE support for kernels 5.4 and 6.1 is available via a release in the ports collection. This is a stepping stone for getting the AoE driver included in the standard system release. An older driver for kernels 4.11 and 5.3 is available via a kernel patch.

The following notes for obtaining the port release are from the driver maintainer:

To obtain the new AoE driver, please do the following on a freshly installed box:
    # cd /usr/ports/net
    # fetch http://www.son.org/download/aoe-kmod.tgz
    # tar xvzf aoe-kmod.tgz
    # cd aoe
    # make install
Please note:
(1) Even though you don't have to install a new kernel (this driver works fine on the default "GENERIC" kernel) you must have the kernel source code installed so the driver will compile. The "port" will check to see if the kernel source code is installed and give an error message if it isn't.
(2) You should also install "ports" as well.
(3) This driver works on either FreeBSD 5.X or 6.X kernels. I have tested it on both 5.4 and 6.1. The port does check the kernel version and give an error message if someone tries to install it on an earlier version. Those still running FreeBSD 4.X should really upgrade.
(4) The "port" also installs /etc/rc.d/aoe start up script and the aoe.4 man page besides the kernel module.
(5) The rc startup script does a few more things to make things "fool proof" like making sure the network interfaces are "UP".
(6) "sysctl net.aoe.discover=1" is no longer required. The driver will send a discover beacon once a minute to all interfaces listed in net.aoe.iflist. To trigger one to be sent manually, set the net.aoe.iflist sysctl.
(7) I am calling this (potential) release version 1.2.0. I added the third number for bug fixes and minor features.
(8) Right now the port downloads the actual source code of the driver from http://www.son.org/download/aoe-freebsd-1.2.0.tar.gz (which is my personal website). The port Makefile will need to be updated if the driver is stored somewhere else (e.g. coraid's website).

After loading AoE into your kernel, see Using AoE on FreeBSD for tips on using AoE with FreeBSD.

Please contact stacey@son.org or support@coraid.com with questions/comments.