Re: kernel update and dmraid causing grub errors

[Heinz Mauelshagen <heinzm@redhat.com>]

Hi David,

because you're able to access your config fine with some arch LTS
kernels, it doesn't make sense to analyze your metadata upfront and the
following reasons may cause the failures:

- initramfs issue not activating ATARAID mappings properly via dmraid

- drivers missing to access the mappings

- host protected area changes going together with the kernel changes
  (eg. the "Error 24: Attempt to access block outside partition");
  try the libata.ignore_hpa kernel paramaters described
  in the kernel source Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
  to test for this one

FYI: in general dmraid doesn't rely on a particular controller, just
metadata signatures it discovers. You could attach the disks to some
other SATA controller and still access your RAID sets.

Regards,
Heinz

On Mon, 2010-11-01 at 17:27 -0500, David C. Rankin wrote:
> dmraid devs,
> 
> 	Over the past 8-9 months, I have had numerous dmraid related boot failures with
> the past 6-8 kernels. It seems like a Russian-roulette type problem. Some
> kernels work with dmraid, some cause grub errors. The problem is most acute on
> an MSI SLI Platinum Based board (MS-7374), Phenom X4 (9850), with the following
> pci bus config:
> 
> [15:48 archangel:/home/david/bugs/aa] # lspci
> 00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] Memory Controller
> (rev a2)
> 00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] LPC Bridge (rev a2)
> 00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] SMBus (rev a1)
> 00:01.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] Memory Controller
> (rev a1)
> 00:01.3 Co-processor: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] Co-Processor (rev a2)
> 00:01.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] Memory Controller
> (rev a1)
> 00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] OHCI USB 1.1
> Controller (rev a1)
> 00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] EHCI USB 2.0
> Controller (rev a1)
> 00:04.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] OHCI USB 1.1
> Controller (rev a1)
> 00:04.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] EHCI USB 2.0
> Controller (rev a1)
> 00:06.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] IDE (rev a1)
> 00:07.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP72XE/MCP72P/MCP78U/MCP78S High
> Definition Audio (rev a1)
> 00:08.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] PCI Bridge (rev a1)
> 00:09.0 RAID bus controller: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] SATA
> Controller (RAID mode) (rev a2)
> 00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: nVidia Corporation MCP77 Ethernet (rev a2)
> 00:10.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] PCI Express Bridge
> (rev a1)
> 00:12.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] PCI Express Bridge
> (rev a1)
> 00:13.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] PCI Bridge (rev a1)
> 00:14.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] PCI Bridge (rev a1)
> 00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K10 [Opteron, Athlon64,
> Sempron] HyperTransport Configuration
> 00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K10 [Opteron, Athlon64,
> Sempron] Address Map
> 00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K10 [Opteron, Athlon64,
> Sempron] DRAM Controller
> 00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K10 [Opteron, Athlon64,
> Sempron] Miscellaneous Control
> 00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K10 [Opteron, Athlon64,
> Sempron] Link Control
> 01:06.0 Serial controller: 3Com Corp, Modem Division 56K FaxModem Model 5610
> (rev 01)
> 01:09.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6306/7/8 [Fire II(M)]
> IEEE 1394 OHCI Controller (rev c0)
> 02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G92 [GeForce 8800 GT] (rev a2)
> 04:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB362/JMB363 Serial ATA
> Controller (rev 03)
> 04:00.1 IDE interface: JMicron Technology Corp. JMB362/JMB363 Serial ATA
> Controller (rev 03)
> 
> full dmidecode information at:
>   http://www.3111skyline.com/dl/Archlute/bugs/aa-dmidecode.txt

Not accessible.

> 
> 	Booting the current Arch Linux kernel (2.6.35.8-1) fails and the boot hangs at
> the very start. The kernel line I use hasn't changed in a long time:
> 
>   kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/mapper/nvidia_baaccajap5 ro vga=0x31a
> 
> 	Booting first stopped with the following error:
> 
> Booting 'Arch Linux on Archangel'
> 
> root (hd1,5)
>   Filesystem type is ext2fs, Partition type 0x83
> Kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/mapper/nvidia_baacca_jap5 ro vga=794
> 
> Error 24: Attempt to access block outside partition
> 
> Press any key to continue...
> 
> 	Upgrading to device-mapper-2.02.75-1 completely changes the error to:
> 
> Error 5: Partition table invalid or corrupt
> 
> 	Rebooting to 2.6.35.7-1, or 2.6.32.25-1 (the Arch LTS kernel) works just fine.
> So the problem is not a partition or partition table problem. The Arch Linux
> developer (Tobias Powalowski) has referred me here as the problem isn't a kernel
> problem, but something strange that is happening with dmraid.
> 
> 	The only guess I have is that it is a dmraid/GeForce controller issue that is
> triggered when dmraid loads under certain circumstances.
> 
> 	This box has 2 dmraid arrays:
> 
> [17:15 archangel:/home/david/bugs/aa] # dmraid -r
> /dev/sdd: nvidia, "nvidia_baaccaja", mirror, ok, 1465149166 sectors, data@ 0
> /dev/sda: nvidia, "nvidia_fdaacfde", mirror, ok, 976773166 sectors, data@ 0
> /dev/sdb: nvidia, "nvidia_baaccaja", mirror, ok, 1465149166 sectors, data@ 0
> /dev/sdc: nvidia, "nvidia_fdaacfde", mirror, ok, 976773166 sectors, data@ 0
> 
> [17:15 archangel:/home/david/bugs/aa] # dmraid -s
> *** Active Set
> name   : nvidia_baaccaja
> size   : 1465149056
> stride : 128
> type   : mirror
> status : ok
> subsets: 0
> devs   : 2
> spares : 0
> *** Active Set
> name   : nvidia_fdaacfde
> size   : 976773120
> stride : 128
> type   : mirror
> status : ok
> subsets: 0
> devs   : 2
> spares : 0
> 
> 	All disks check out fine with smartctl, so it isn't a disk-hardware problem.
> The detailed information on the GeForce controller (lspci -vv) is:
> 
> 00:09.0 RAID bus controller: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] SATA
> Controller (RAID mode) (rev a2)
>         Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. Device 7374
>         Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr-
> Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx+
>         Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort-
> <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
>         Latency: 0 (750ns min, 250ns max)
>         Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 28
>         Region 0: I/O ports at b080 [size=8]
>         Region 1: I/O ports at b000 [size=4]
>         Region 2: I/O ports at ac00 [size=8]
>         Region 3: I/O ports at a880 [size=4]
>         Region 4: I/O ports at a800 [size=16]
>         Region 5: Memory at f9e76000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
>         Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2
>                 Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA
> PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
>                 Status: D0 NoSoftRst- PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
>         Capabilities: [8c] SATA HBA v1.0 InCfgSpace
>         Capabilities: [b0] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/8 Maskable- 64bit+
>                 Address: 00000000fee0f00c  Data: 4191
>         Capabilities: [ec] HyperTransport: MSI Mapping Enable+ Fixed+
>         Kernel driver in use: ahci
>         Kernel modules: ahci
> 
> 
>     Basically, I'm stumped here. Nothing has changed with this box in over a
> year (same grub menu.lst, same hardware), the only oddity is that in 4 of the
> last 6 kernels or so have failed to boot with this weird grub error, that has
> nothing to do with grub (because it boots all other kernels fine), but is
> 1Gsomething that results from dmraid and the way it gets initialized (which I'm
> clueless about).
> 
>     Let me know what you think and let me know what data or testing you want me
> to do. I'll be happy to do it. I last filed this bug with Arch against 2.6.35-1
> and the problem was never fixed, but (solved) by upgrading to the (next -
> testing kernel), so the actual problem was never found. The url to the closed
> report is:
> 
> https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/20918?
> 
>     Thanks for any ideas or help you can give.
>