Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 22 Jul 2003 14:07:32 -0400 | Subject | Re: 2.4.21-pre4: PDC ide driver problems with shared interrupts | From | "John V. Martinez" <> |
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Hi Ed,
Thanks for the quick reply. Sadly, I think I have a different (possibly related?) problem, as I am not currently using devfs.
(clarification: my kernel does have devfs support compiled in, but it is not mounted on my system -- you don't think just having it compiled in makes any difference, do you? I can't see why it would, but stranger things have happened -- to me, at least :^) -- I'm currently running a Debian 3.0 system with their 'Pentium Classic' 2.4.18 kernel (2.4.18-586tsc) flavor, but the problem was still present when I tried switching to the 2.4.20 kernel currently in testing. I guess I'll try building 2.4.21 when I get a chance - trouble is, it's (supposed to be) a 24x7 server, so I can't afford too much downtime for these experiments. (Which is why I was searching the web, hoping to find a definitive checkin comment somewhere that said "John's problem with two promise controllers locking up his system when he rebuild his RAID array is fixed now in 2.4.21-cheesewhiz" but no such luck.
:^)
I guess if all else fails, I'll use the setup you have: 4-drive RAID on one controller. My concern was not so much the performance hit of using both master&slave, but the possibility of a bad drive hosing the connection to both drives on that controller, thus taking down 1/2 of my RAID5 array at once.
Do you happen to know if anybody makes a (Linux-friendly) IDE controller card with more than two channels? All the cards I have found which will connect more than 4 drives are hardware RAID controllers, (or faux-hardware raid, like Promise.)
Anyway, thanks again for your time,
-(-- John V. Martinez
On Tue, Jul 22, 2003 at 09:44:10AM -0500, Edward King wrote: > John: > > Quick fix to the problem is remove devfs -- it appears that the devfs > code doesn't like to have the raid layered on top of it, and it loses > interrupts. > > I've got two systems now running 4 200GB WD's connected to a single > promise card (ATA100/TX2) with the booting drive (a 5th drive) attached > to the motherboard. The raid works flawlessly and is fast -- I imagine > there'd be a speedup by keeping all the drives as master (with 2 pdc's) > and it would be more robust, but those aren't issues. > > Hope this helps -- I'll post this to the mailing list to help anyone > else with this problem. > > - Ed > > John V. Martinez wrote: > > >Hi Ed, > > > >I found a linux-kernel post you made back in March about problems > >running two Promise IDE controllers in the same system. I have a > >similar configuration, (and a similar problem,) and I was wondering if > >you ever found a solution, or if one of the more recent 2.4.21-foo > >kernels solved it for you. > > > >(I have two Promise ATA-100/TX2 (20268 chip) controllers, and I have > >one 200GB WD drive as a single master on each channel. The two > >controllers are sharing interrupts with othwer cards, but not with > >each other. I can access each disk individually, but when I tried to > >make them work hard: mkraid a RAID5 array using these four drives, the > >system freezes HARD until I hit the big red button. [Then it reboots, > >spots the raid superblock, tries to rebuild my RAID5 array, and > >freezes again, until I get a clue and unplug the drives in question > >while powered down :^)) > > > >Anyway, if you have any more insight into this problem than you did in > >March, and care to share, I'd be much obliged. > > > >Cheers, > > > >-(-- John > > - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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