Release Notes mpt-status 1.2.0 (2006-11-03)
==============================
Codename: <Zidane>

[True master of soccer. If you don't know anything about him, read up on him at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zinedine_Zidane. Despite the fact that I'm Italian 
and I'm proud that we have won the championship, I'd like to dedicate this
release to my hard-working French contributors. Merci beaucoup et tout est bien 
qui finit bien.]


About
-----
The mpt-status software is a query tool to access the running configuration and
status of LSI SCSI HBAs. This is a completely rewritten version of the original
mpt-status-1.0 tool written by Matt Braithwaite. mpt-status allows you to
monitor the health and status of your RAID setup.

Currently supported and tested HBAs are:

LSI 1030 SCSI RAID storage controller
LSI SAS1064 SCSI RAID storage controller
LSI SAS1068 SCSI RAID storage controller
LSI SAS 3442-R SCSI RAID storage controller

Since the tool is using the MPI (message passing interface) changes are high
that the basic information regarding RAID status will be available for all
LSI based controllers. Just give it a try and report back.


Requirements
------------
You should have mptbase and mptctl loaded or compiled into the kernel. If you
are to compile mpt-status by yourself, make sure you have the kernel source
installed, or else it will fail. This deficiency will hopefully be addressed
soon.


General Information
-------------------
This is the first release with proper 64bit support and mostly clean interface
querying. On top of that numerous contributions have been merged, please see
the Changelog for further information. As a last minute addition I've decided
to bundle the mpt-status.8 man page into the release drop. This was written
and contributed by Steffen Joeris, the Debian maintainer for mpt-status.

Preliminary work has been done on integrating S.M.A.R.T information in the
report output. This would allow one to monitor for failing hardware and
preemptively replace it without business interruption. This information can
be queried via the --newstyle/-n parameter. The new style parameter also
provides you with the percentage status of the synchronisation after a
degradation.

Problems
--------
None.


Reported working hardware configuration
---------------------------------------
Sun Fire X4100
Sun Fire X4200
Sun Fire V20z
Sun Fire V40z
Dell PE2600
Intel Server with SE7520BD2S boards
HP ProLiant DL320 G4
IBM eServer BladeCenter LS20


Upgrade
-------
You can upgrade mpt-status without any problems. This has been widely tested
by a broad user base.


Outlook
-------
I will take another look at the output format and see if I can improve it.
The other thing is to take a look at integrating more LSI related products
or give better indication on how to use the closed-source CLI tools.