Re: [SCSI REGRESSION] 3.10.2 or 3.10.3: arcmsr failure at bootup / early userspace transition

[Nix <nix@esperi.org.uk>]

On 30 Jul 2013, Douglas Gilbert outgrape:

> Please supply the information that Martin Petersen asked
> for.

Did it in private IRC (the advantage of working for the same division of
the same company!)

I didn't realise the original fix was actually implemented to allow
Bernd, with a different Areca controller, to boot... obviously, in that
situation, reversion is wrong, since that would just replace one won't-
boot situation with another.

It looks like a solution is possible that will let us boot *both* my
controller (with its old 2009-era firmware) *and* his. We just have
to let Martin implement it. Give him time, I only got a successful
boot out of it an hour ago :)

> I just examined a more recent Areca SAS RAID controller
> and would describe it as the SCSI device from hell. One solution
> to this problem is to modify the arcmsr driver so it returns
> a more consistent set of lies to the management SCSI commands that
> Martin is asking about.

I can't help notice that something is skewy in its error handling, too.
When the controller errors, even resetting the bus doesn't seem to be
enough to bring it back :/ I've seen errors from it before which did
*not* lead to it imploding forever, but this is apparently not one such.

Certainly Areca-the-company has... issues with communication with the
community (i.e., they don't). A shame I didn't know that before I bought
the controller and made all my data completely dependent on it, really.
Shame, the controller otherwise works very well (fast, and has coped
with a disk failure with aplomb).

-- 
NULL && (void)