LSI Logic MegaRAID SATA 150-4 / LSI Logic New Generation RAID Device Drivers (MEGARAID_NEWGEN) problems (megaraid abort: scsi cmd:14600, do now own)

["David M. Strang" <dstrang@shellpower.net>]

Greetings -

A couple months back I purchased a LSI Logic MegaRAID ATA 150-4 
controller, as well as 3 Seagate 500GB SATA-II hard drives to use in my 
system. Previously, I was using a pair of WD4000YR's in software raid, 
which seemed to work well. I've just not gotten around to working on 
migrating my data to these new drivers + controller, and it's giving me 
some issues. As with most, I'm having some severe performance issues, 
the performance is simply abysmal. Before getting into the details, here 
is a quick overview of my configuration:

System:
Tyan Tiger i7320/R (S5350) System Board
2x Intel Xeon 3.0 GHz
4GB RAM

LSI Logic MegaRAID ATA 150-4 controller -  Firmware Revision: 713S
3x Seagate 7200.10 (Perpendicular Recording) ST3500630AS 500GB SATA-II 
drives configured as a RAID-1 array with a HotSpare.

Also, connected to the onboard controller is a WD4000YR, where all of my 
data currently resides.

I'm running Gentoo Hardended AMD64 MultiLib 
(/usr/portage/profiles/hardened/amd64/multilib)

My current kernel revision is 2.6.23-hardened-r7.

Here are some (possibly) relevant snippets from dmesg during startup:

...
megaraid cmm: 2.20.2.7 (Release Date: Sun Jul 16 00:01:03 EST 2006)
megaraid: 2.20.5.1 (Release Date: Thu Nov 16 15:32:35 EST 2006)
megaraid: probe new device 0x1000:0x1960:0x1000:0x4523: bus 3:slot 3:func 0
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:03:03.0[A] -> GSI 24 (level, low) -> IRQ 24
megaraid: fw version:[713S] bios version:[G121]
scsi0 : LSI Logic MegaRAID driver
scsi[0]: scanning scsi channel 0 [Phy 0] for non-raid devices
scsi[0]: scanning scsi channel 1 [virtual] for logical drives
scsi 0:1:0:0: Direct-Access     MegaRAID LD 0 RAID1  476G 713S PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
sd 0:1:0:0: [sda] 976762880 512-byte hardware sectors (500103 MB)
sd 0:1:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
sd 0:1:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00
sd 0:1:0:0: [sda] Asking for cache data failed
sd 0:1:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
sd 0:1:0:0: [sda] 976762880 512-byte hardware sectors (500103 MB)
sd 0:1:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
sd 0:1:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 00 00 00
sd 0:1:0:0: [sda] Asking for cache data failed
sd 0:1:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through
 sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4
sd 0:1:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk
ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: version 2.12
ata_piix 0000:00:1f.2: MAP [ P0 -- P1 -- ]
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1f.2[A] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:1f.2 to 64
scsi1 : ata_piix
scsi2 : ata_piix
ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x00000000000114a0 ctl 0x000000000001149a 
bmdma 0x0000000000011470 irq 18
ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x0000000000011490 ctl 0x0000000000011486 
bmdma 0x0000000000011478 irq 18
ata1.00: ATA-7: WDC WD4000YR-01PLB0, 01.06A01, max UDMA/133
ata1.00: 781422768 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)
ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
scsi 1:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ATA      WDC WD4000YR-01P 01.0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] 781422768 512-byte hardware sectors (400088 MB)
sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't 
support DPO or FUA
sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] 781422768 512-byte hardware sectors (400088 MB)
sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't 
support DPO or FUA
 sdb: sdb1 sdb2 sdb3 sdb4
sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
...

My controller is configured for Write Back Caching, Adaptive Read Ahead, 
and Direct I/O (I've also tried cached I/O but it scared me...)

The first thing I'm noticing is the horrible performance on the raid 
disk, compared to the single standalone hard disk. Here is the output 
from hdparm -tT on the single disk:

-(root@server)-(~)- # hdparm -tT /dev/sdb1

/dev/sdb1:
 Timing cached reads:   1670 MB in  2.00 seconds = 835.00 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  140 MB in  3.01 seconds =  46.45 MB/sec

And then, the output from the raid-1 array:

-(root@server)-(~)- # hdparm -tT /dev/sda1

/dev/sda1:
 Timing cached reads:   1718 MB in  2.00 seconds = 859.65 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:   92 MB in  3.09 seconds =  29.76 MB/sec

I'm not sure what the deal is with the buffered disk reads being so much 
WORSE than a single disk. So poor performance is a concern, but what's 
more alarming are the messages showing up in DMESG. When I first tried 
Cached IO - performance seemed good... except, dmesg was littered with 
these errors (?):

megaraid: aborting-14610 cmd=2a <c=1 t=0 l=0>
megaraid abort: scsi cmd:14610, do now own
megaraid: aborting-14612 cmd=2a <c=1 t=0 l=0>
megaraid abort: scsi cmd:14612, do now own
megaraid: aborting-14614 cmd=2a <c=1 t=0 l=0>
megaraid abort: scsi cmd:14614, do now own
...
megaraid: 38 outstanding commands. Max wait 300 sec
megaraid mbox: Wait for 38 commands to complete:300
megaraid mbox: reset sequence completed sucessfully

I'm not certain what these mean... why am I getting aborts?

So, I rebooted the box - and I switched back to direct I/O instead of 
cached... and while not as prevelant as before, I still get the above 
listed errors as well as these ones:

megaraid abort: 14687:62[255:128], fw owner
megaraid: aborting-14689 cmd=2a <c=1 t=0 l=0>
megaraid abort: 14689:25[255:128], fw owner
megaraid: aborting-14691 cmd=2a <c=1 t=0 l=0>
megaraid abort: 14691:40[255:128], fw owner
megaraid: aborting-14693 cmd=2a <c=1 t=0 l=0>
megaraid abort: 14693:10[255:128], fw owner
megaraid: aborting-14695 cmd=2a <c=1 t=0 l=0>
megaraid abort: 14695:9[255:128], fw owner


I'm also a bit concerned by the dmesg output from the drive 
initialization; I have it set for Write Back caching, but this shows up:

sd 0:1:0:0: [sda] Asking for cache data failed
sd 0:1:0:0: [sda] Assuming drive cache: write through

Why?

I would really like to get my data over to my hardware mirror, but 
frankly - I'm nervous about this controller's behavior. Other than error 
messages in dmesg, and high cpu during file i/o -- it SEEMS ok, but is 
it really? I somehow don't think I should be getting these types of 
messages. I've searched the list archive, and I see similar messages 
follow by failed resets, but my reset sequence always completes 
successfully.

Regards,
David M. Strang