MLXCONTROL(8)

📦 version 15.1, in freebsd 14.5, freebsd 15.1

💅 mlxcontrol — the Mylex DAC-family RAID glow-up utility

okay so real quick bestie: this is a page from the System Manager's Manual, section 8 (that's the "system admin commands" section, iykyk), and it's your whole guide to wrangling RAID controllers without losing your mind 💖

✨ NAME ✨

mlxcontrol — Mylex DAC-family RAID management utility 🎀

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

mlxcontrol ⟨command⟩ [args]
mlxcontrol status [-qv] [drive]
mlxcontrol rescan controller [controller ...]
mlxcontrol detach drive [drive ...]
mlxcontrol detach -a
mlxcontrol check drive
mlxcontrol config controller
mlxcontrol help command

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So mlxcontrol is the utility that gives you status monitoring and management functions for devices attached to the mlx(4) driver. That's it. That's the whole assignment. 💅

Now, naming conventions, because getting these wrong is so not the vibe:

  • Controller names look like "mlxN", where N is the unit number of the controller 👑
  • Drive names look like "mlxdN", where N is the unit number of the drive 🍓
⚠️ Do not specify the path to a device node. Just the name, bestie. Just the name. 😭

Here's the command rundown, one by one:

  • status — prints the status of controllers and system drives. If you pass one or more drives, it only prints info about those drives; otherwise it prints info about all controllers and drives in the system. With the -v flag you get much more verbose info (slay, give me the lore 🔥). With the -q flag it prints no output at all (the silent treatment, but make it functional 🙈). This command returns 0 if all drives tested are online, 1 if one or more drives are critical, and 2 if one or more are offline — so its exit status is literally the vibe check ⭐
  • rescan — rescans one or more controllers for non-attached system drives (like, drives that have been detached, or drives created after driver initialisation — late bloomers, iconic honestly 🌈). If the -a flag is supplied, it rescans all controllers in the system ✨
  • detach — detaches one or more system drives. Big caveat: the drives must be unmounted and not opened by any other utility for this command to succeed. Respect the boundaries, okay? 🫶 If the -a flag is supplied, it detaches all system drives from the nominated controller 💀
  • check — initiates a consistency check and repair pass on a redundant system drive (so like RAID1 or RAID5). The controller scans the system drive and repairs any inconsistencies. This command returns immediately, so use the status command to monitor the progress — it's giving "I fired off the task and I'm not waiting around" 😌
  • rebuild — requires two arguments: controller and physdrive, as specified in the output of the status command. All system drives using space on the physical drive physdrive get rebuilt, reconstructing all the data on the drive 💪 Note that each controller can only perform one rebuild at a time — one at a time, bestie, patience is a virtue. This command also returns immediately; use the status command to monitor the progress 👑
  • config — prints the current configuration from the nominated controller. Heads up: this command will be updated to allow addition/deletion of system drives from a configuration in a future release. So for now it's read-only and we simply live with that 🧚
  • help — prints usage information for command 📖

🫶 AUTHORS 🫶

The mlxcontrol utility was written by Michael Smith <msmith@FreeBSD.org>. Give him his flowers 💐👑

💀 BUGS 💀

  • The config command does not yet support modifying system drive configuration. It's on the list, bestie. On the list. 😭
  • Error log extraction is not yet supported. Not yet! Future us will handle it 🌸

okay and the cute little sign-off at the very bottom: this page is from Debian, dated April 10, 2000 — so yes, it's vintage, it's retro, it's got main character energy from another era 🎀💜 and you now know literally everything it says. periodt. ✨

📦 where this page comes from