Re: BusLogic driver reports non-existent disks since VMware 1.0.4

[James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>]

On Sun, 2008-03-16 at 20:30 +0000, Daniel Drake wrote:
> There's no evidence that this is a BusLogic driver bug (as opposed to 
> being a VMware bug), but as I couldn't find any mention on this list I 
> thought I'd bring it to peoples attention:
> 
> If you upgrade from vmware 1.0.3 to 1.0.4, when using the BusLogic 
> emulation (as opposed to LSI logic), the kernel reports existence of 
> many disks that do not actually exist. Accessing those disks obviously 
> causes hangs and error messages.
> 
> http://communities.vmware.com/thread/103939?tstart=0&start=0
> https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=198296
> 
> dmesg output from such a system:
> https://bugs.gentoo.org/attachment.cgi?id=135371&action=view
> 
> This is similar but not the same as another vmware vs scsi driver problem:
> http://marc.info/?l=linux-scsi&m=118590789115292&w=2
> (that one is different and has been fixed in vmware)
> 
> If anyone is interested in investigating, I can pass on patches to 
> people who can test them.

It does rather look like a vmware emulation problem.  The Short INQUIRY
read:

scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     VMware,  VMware Virtual S 1.0  PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
scsi scan: INQUIRY result too short (5), using 36
scsi 0:0:1:0: Direct-Access                                    PQ: 0 ANSI: 0

Implies the inquiry returned all zeros (length of 5 is because that's
the offset into the INQUIRY of the additional length), which is also a
strong indicator of a vmware issue.

There have been reports of BusLogic Flashpoint working, but that's
practically a separate driver.  The only real way to be sure is for
someone to try it out with a real BT-958 and see.

James