siimage and drive order problem

siimage and drive order problem

[Daniel Brahneborg]

Greetings,

I have an Abit KV7 motherboard with an Serial-ATA PCI
card with a si3112 chipset.  The motherboard has two
additional serial-ata slots on a VIA chip, and a normal
IDE disk on ide0.

My problem is that when I boot with siimage.c enabled
or try to insert it as a module after booting, it forces
the drives on that card to become hda and hdb, messing
things up pretty badly.  How can I force that driver to
use hde/hdf/... instead?  Without it the drives aren't
usable at all.

I want a setup where hda-hdd lives on the old ATA bus
and the two Serial-ATA cards comes afterwards.  Is that
possible?

I've searched through all documentation I can find, but
everybody seems to want to have the S-ATA drives as hda,
hdb etc.

Many thanks,

/Basic

Re: siimage and drive order problem

[Ryan Earl]

On Friday 26 December 2003 07:54 am, Daniel Brahneborg wrote:
The motherboard has two
> additional serial-ata slots on a VIA chip, and a normal
> IDE disk on ide0.
> My problem is that when I boot with siimage.c enabled
> or try to insert it as a module after booting, it forces
> the drives on that card to become hda and hdb

Are you sure about the module?  If you boot with your southbridge's ATA
driver
built directly into the kernel it should be initialized first, and show your
PATA ports starting at hda.  After those are assigned, if you modprobe 
siimage those ports should be hde and hdg or hdi and hdk if that
southbridge
has 4 PATA ports.  It does right?

That's what works for me anyway with a KT333 chipset = via82cxxx
southbridge.
What does the ordering mess up that modifications to fstab or raidtab 
couldn't fix?  You bootloader should have some way of setting a different 
root directory right after the POST.

-ryan

Re: siimage and two nics (was: drive order problem)

[Daniel Brahneborg]

On Fri, Dec 26, 2003 at 07:14:39AM -0600, Ryan Earl wrote:
> On Friday 26 December 2003 07:54 am, Daniel Brahneborg wrote:
> The motherboard has two
> > additional serial-ata slots on a VIA chip, and a normal
> > IDE disk on ide0.
> > My problem is that when I boot with siimage.c enabled
> > or try to insert it as a module after booting, it forces
> > the drives on that card to become hda and hdb
> 
> Are you sure about the module?  If you boot with your southbridge's ATA
> driver
> built directly into the kernel it should be initialized first, and show your
> PATA ports starting at hda.  After those are assigned, if you modprobe 

If I boot with the siimage module builtin, the kernel doesn't
find the root device (set to /dev/hda2).

> siimage those ports should be hde and hdg or hdi and hdk if that
> southbridge has 4 PATA ports.  It does right?

No, it has 2 PATA connectors and 2 SATA (via82cxxx) connectors.
In addition, I have that Silicon Image 3112 card with 2 SATA
connectors.

> That's what works for me anyway with a KT333 chipset = via82cxxx
> southbridge.
> What does the ordering mess up that modifications to fstab or raidtab 
> couldn't fix?  You bootloader should have some way of setting a different 
> root directory right after the POST.

I'm running Grub, so I guess it could set the root device to
just about anything.  The question is why it changes when the
siimage module is loaded, and what the new name of the hda
device is.

As a workaround, I now skip the siimage module entirely, and only
load the sata_via and sata_sil modules.  This makes all 4 SATA
drives come alive as sda, sdb etc, leaving hda untouched.  I get
50 MB/s with hdparm -tT, so it seems to work fine.

New Problem:

I still have a rather serious problem, also SATA related.  I want
to have two network cards in that machine, one of them being a
common 8139 card.  As the other one I want to use the via-rhine
card on the motherboard.  The first network card comes alive
without problem, but when I try to do "ifconfig eth1 up", the
entire machine comes to a complete stop.  Not even Caps Lock work,
and I have to power cycle it.  Two 8139 cards have the same effect.
Removing the Silicon Image card makes it work fine.  How do I do
to get some debug information on what happens?

Here is the output from lspci -v.

00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 3189 (rev 80)
	Subsystem: ABIT Computer Corp.: Unknown device 1408
	Flags: bus master, 66Mhz, medium devsel, latency 8
	Memory at e8000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M]
	Capabilities: [80] AGP version 3.5
	Capabilities: [c0] Power Management version 2

00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device b198 (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
	Flags: bus master, 66Mhz, medium devsel, latency 0
	Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=0
	Capabilities: [80] Power Management version 2

00:08.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. 86c968 [Vision 968 VRAM] rev 0 (prog-if 00 [VGA])
	Flags: stepping, medium devsel, IRQ 12
	Memory at 20000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64M]
	Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled] [size=64K]

00:09.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
	Subsystem: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RT8139
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 11
	I/O ports at a000 [size=256]
	Memory at ea000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
	Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2

00:0b.0 Unknown mass storage controller: CMD Technology Inc: Unknown device 3112 (rev 02)
	Subsystem: CMD Technology Inc: Unknown device 3112
	Flags: bus master, 66Mhz, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 10
	I/O ports at a400 [size=8]
	I/O ports at a800 [size=4]
	I/O ports at ac00 [size=8]
	I/O ports at b000 [size=4]
	I/O ports at b400 [size=16]
	Memory at ea001000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512]
	Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled] [size=512K]
	Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 2

00:0f.0 RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 3149 (rev 80)
	Subsystem: ABIT Computer Corp.: Unknown device 1408
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 11
	I/O ports at b800 [size=8]
	I/O ports at bc00 [size=4]
	I/O ports at c000 [size=8]
	I/O ports at c400 [size=4]
	I/O ports at c800 [size=16]
	I/O ports at cc00 [size=256]
	Capabilities: [c0] Power Management version 2

00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586B PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06) (prog-if 8a [Master SecP PriP])
	Subsystem: ABIT Computer Corp.: Unknown device 1408
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32
	I/O ports at d000 [size=16]
	Capabilities: [c0] Power Management version 2

00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 81) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
	Subsystem: ABIT Computer Corp.: Unknown device 1408
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 12
	I/O ports at d400 [size=32]
	Capabilities: [80] Power Management version 2

00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 81) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
	Subsystem: ABIT Computer Corp.: Unknown device 1408
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 12
	I/O ports at d800 [size=32]
	Capabilities: [80] Power Management version 2

00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 81) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
	Subsystem: ABIT Computer Corp.: Unknown device 1408
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 11
	I/O ports at dc00 [size=32]
	Capabilities: [80] Power Management version 2

00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 81) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
	Subsystem: ABIT Computer Corp.: Unknown device 1408
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 11
	I/O ports at e000 [size=32]
	Capabilities: [80] Power Management version 2

00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86) (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
	Subsystem: ABIT Computer Corp.: Unknown device 1408
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 5
	Memory at ea002000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
	Capabilities: [80] Power Management version 2

00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 3227
	Subsystem: ABIT Computer Corp.: Unknown device 1408
	Flags: bus master, stepping, medium devsel, latency 0
	Capabilities: [c0] Power Management version 2

00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 78)
	Subsystem: ABIT Computer Corp.: Unknown device 1408
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32, IRQ 12
	I/O ports at e400 [size=256]
	Memory at ea003000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
	Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2

/Basic

Re: siimage and two nics

[J. Ryan Earl]

>If I boot with the siimage module builtin, the kernel doesn't
>find the root device (set to /dev/hda2).
>  
>

You can't use the Via sata for the root device?  It's off the slow PCI 
bus, it'll be much faster anyway.

>As a workaround, I now skip the siimage module entirely, and only
>load the sata_via and sata_sil modules.  This makes all 4 SATA
>drives come alive as sda, sdb etc, leaving hda untouched.  I get
>50 MB/s with hdparm -tT, so it seems to work fine.
>  
>
Be careful, sata_sil is broken.  It is not stable, and has failed every 
stress test I've tried on it.  The siimage ide driver is actually stable 
around v1.09.

>New Problem:
>
>I still have a rather serious problem, also SATA related.  I want
>to have two network cards in that machine, one of them being a
>common 8139 card.  As the other one I want to use the via-rhine
>card on the motherboard.  The first network card comes alive
>without problem, but when I try to do "ifconfig eth1 up", the
>entire machine comes to a complete stop.  Not even Caps Lock work,
>and I have to power cycle it.  Two 8139 cards have the same effect.
>Removing the Silicon Image card makes it work fine.  How do I do
>to get some debug information on what happens?
>
>Here is the output from lspci -v.
>  
>
dmesg?  '/proc/version'?  newest bios?  move the sata card to a new pci 
slot?

-ryan

Re: siimage and two nics

[Daniel Brahneborg]

Thanks for your quick replies.

On Fri, Dec 26, 2003 at 03:48:53AM +0000, J. Ryan Earl wrote:
> >If I boot with the siimage module builtin, the kernel doesn't
> >find the root device (set to /dev/hda2).
> 
> You can't use the Via sata for the root device?  It's off the slow PCI 
> bus, it'll be much faster anyway.

I guess I could, I just needed something to install to.
It's a file server, so it's the SATA disks that will take
the biggest hit.

> >As a workaround, I now skip the siimage module entirely, and only
> >load the sata_via and sata_sil modules.  This makes all 4 SATA
> >drives come alive as sda, sdb etc, leaving hda untouched.  I get
> >50 MB/s with hdparm -tT, so it seems to work fine.
>
> Be careful, sata_sil is broken.  It is not stable, and has failed every 
> stress test I've tried on it.  The siimage ide driver is actually stable 
> around v1.09.

I wouldn't mind using something else, but then I must first
understand how to get it to stop messing with my PATA hda.
Would that driver make the SATA disk suddenly appear as IDE
disks instead of SCSI?

Checking... oh, it's 1.06 in Linus 2.4.23 kernel.  The diff
doesn't seem to be very much, just a check for 3114 and a fix
for Seagate drives.

> >New Problem:
> >
> >I still have a rather serious problem, also SATA related.  I want
> >to have two network cards in that machine, one of them being a
> >common 8139 card.  As the other one I want to use the via-rhine
> >card on the motherboard.  The first network card comes alive
> >without problem, but when I try to do "ifconfig eth1 up", the
> >entire machine comes to a complete stop.  Not even Caps Lock work,
> >and I have to power cycle it.  Two 8139 cards have the same effect.
> >Removing the Silicon Image card makes it work fine.  How do I do
> >to get some debug information on what happens?
> >
> >Here is the output from lspci -v.
>
>  '/proc/version'?

Linux version 2.4.23-xfs (root@fw.grimsta)
(gcc 3.2 20020903 (Red Hat Linux 8.0 3.2-7))
#8 Fri Dec 26 13:21:26 CET 2003

> newest bios?

The motherboard is just a week old, so I haven't even thought of
doing anything with the bios.

> move the sata card to a new pci slot?

Both the sata card and the network cards have switched places
a bit, with no difference in behaviour.

> dmesg?

Appended.

/Basic

Linux version 2.4.23-xfs (root@fw.grimsta) (gcc version 3.2 20020903 (Red Hat Linux 8.0 3.2-7)) #8 Fri Dec 26 13:21:26 CET 2003
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
 BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
 BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000001fef0000 (usable)
 BIOS-e820: 000000001fef0000 - 000000001fef3000 (ACPI NVS)
 BIOS-e820: 000000001fef3000 - 000000001ff00000 (ACPI data)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 00000000fec01000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000fee00000 - 00000000fee01000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000ffff0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
510MB LOWMEM available.
On node 0 totalpages: 130800
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 126704 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
Kernel command line: ro root=/dev/hda3
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 819.311 MHz processor.
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 1635.12 BogoMIPS
Memory: 514816k/523200k available (1587k kernel code, 7996k reserved, 460k data, 76k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
Inode cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
CPU: L1 I Cache: 64K (64 bytes/line), D cache 64K (64 bytes/line)
CPU: L2 Cache: 64K (64 bytes/line)
Intel machine check architecture supported.
Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.
CPU:     After generic, caps: 0183fbff c1c7fbff 00000000 00000000
CPU:             Common caps: 0183fbff c1c7fbff 00000000 00000000
CPU: AMD Duron(tm) processor stepping 01
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfaf40, last bus=1
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
PCI: Using IRQ router VIA [1106/3227] at 00:11.0
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
Starting kswapd
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
SGI XFS snapshot-2.4.23-2003-12-01_00:33_UTC with ACLs, no debug enabled
pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with MANY_PORTS SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI enabled
Real Time Clock Driver v1.10e
floppy0: no floppy controllers found
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta4-2.4
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
hda: FUJITSU MHM2060AT, ATA DISK drive
hdd: MATSHITA CD-RW CW-7586, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: attached ide-disk driver.
hda: host protected area => 1
hda: 11733120 sectors (6007 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=730/255/63
hdd: attached ide-cdrom driver.
hdd: ATAPI 32X CD-ROM CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
Partition check:
 hda: hda1 hda2 hda3
md: raid5 personality registered as nr 4
raid5: measuring checksumming speed
   8regs     :  1176.000 MB/sec
   32regs    :   909.600 MB/sec
   pII_mmx   :  1920.800 MB/sec
   p5_mmx    :  2464.400 MB/sec
raid5: using function: p5_mmx (2464.400 MB/sec)
md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
IP: routing cache hash table of 4096 buckets, 32Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 32768 bind 65536)
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
EXT3-fs: INFO: recovery required on readonly filesystem.
EXT3-fs: write access will be enabled during recovery.
kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: recovery complete.
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 76k freed
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,3), internal journal
Adding Swap: 522104k swap-space (priority -1)
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
libata version 0.81 loaded.
ata_sil version 0.51
PCI: Found IRQ 10 for device 00:0b.0
ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xE0870080 ctl 0xE087008A bmdma 0xE0870000 irq 10
ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xE08700C0 ctl 0xE08700CA bmdma 0xE0870008 irq 10
ata1: dev 0 cfg 49:2f00 82:346b 83:7f01 84:4003 85:3c68 86:3c01 87:4003 88:20ff
ata1: dev 0 ATA, max UDMA7, 312581808 sectors (lba48)
ata1: dev 0 configured for UDMA/133
ata2: dev 0 cfg 49:2f00 82:346b 83:7f01 84:4003 85:3c68 86:3c01 87:4003 88:20ff
ata2: dev 0 ATA, max UDMA7, 312581808 sectors (lba48)
ata2: dev 0 configured for UDMA/133
scsi0 : ata_sil
scsi1 : ata_sil
  Vendor: ATA       Model: SAMSUNG SP1614C   Rev: 0.81
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 05
  Vendor: ATA       Model: SAMSUNG SP1614C   Rev: 0.81
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 05
sata_via version 0.11
ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xB800 ctl 0xBC02 bmdma 0xC800 irq 11
ata4: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xC000 ctl 0xC402 bmdma 0xC808 irq 11
ata3: dev 0 cfg 49:2f00 82:346b 83:7f01 84:4003 85:3c68 86:3c01 87:4003 88:00ff
ata3: dev 0 ATA, max UDMA7, 312581808 sectors (lba48)
ata3: dev 0 configured for UDMA/133
ata4: dev 0 cfg 49:2f00 82:346b 83:7f01 84:4003 85:3c68 86:3c01 87:4003 88:00ff
ata4: dev 0 ATA, max UDMA7, 312581808 sectors (lba48)
ata4: dev 0 configured for UDMA/133
scsi2 : sata_via
scsi3 : sata_via
  Vendor: ATA       Model: SAMSUNG SP1614C   Rev: 0.81
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 05
  Vendor: ATA       Model: SAMSUNG SP1614C   Rev: 0.81
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 05
Attached scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Attached scsi disk sdb at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Attached scsi disk sdc at scsi2, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
Attached scsi disk sdd at scsi3, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
SCSI device sda: 312581808 512-byte hdwr sectors (160042 MB)
 sda: sda1 sda2
SCSI device sdb: 312581808 512-byte hdwr sectors (160042 MB)
 sdb: sdb1 sdb2
SCSI device sdc: 312581808 512-byte hdwr sectors (160042 MB)
 sdc: sdc1 sdc2
SCSI device sdd: 312581808 512-byte hdwr sectors (160042 MB)
 sdd: sdd1 sdd2
 [events: 00000010]
 [events: 00000010]
 [events: 00000010]
 [events: 00000010]
md: autorun ...
md: considering sdb2 ...
md:  adding sdb2 ...
md:  adding sdd2 ...
md:  adding sdc2 ...
md:  adding sda2 ...
md: created md0
md: bind<sda2,1>
md: bind<sdc2,2>
md: bind<sdd2,3>
md: bind<sdb2,4>
md: running: <sdb2><sdd2><sdc2><sda2>
md: sdb2's event counter: 00000010
md: sdd2's event counter: 00000010
md: sdc2's event counter: 00000010
md: sda2's event counter: 00000010
md: md0: raid array is not clean -- starting background reconstruction
md0: max total readahead window set to 3072k
md0: 3 data-disks, max readahead per data-disk: 1024k
raid5: device sdb2 operational as raid disk 3
raid5: device sdd2 operational as raid disk 1
raid5: device sdc2 operational as raid disk 0
raid5: device sda2 operational as raid disk 2
raid5: allocated 4330kB for md0
raid5: raid level 5 set md0 active with 4 out of 4 devices, algorithm 0
raid5: raid set md0 not clean; reconstructing parity
RAID5 conf printout:
 --- rd:4 wd:4 fd:0
 disk 0, s:0, o:1, n:0 rd:0 us:1 dev:sdc2
 disk 1, s:0, o:1, n:1 rd:1 us:1 dev:sdd2
 disk 2, s:0, o:1, n:2 rd:2 us:1 dev:sda2
 disk 3, s:0, o:1, n:3 rd:3 us:1 dev:sdb2
RAID5 conf printout:
 --- rd:4 wd:4 fd:0
 disk 0, s:0, o:1, n:0 rd:0 us:1 dev:sdc2
 disk 1, s:0, o:1, n:1 rd:1 us:1 dev:sdd2
 disk 2, s:0, o:1, n:2 rd:2 us:1 dev:sda2
 disk 3, s:0, o:1, n:3 rd:3 us:1 dev:sdb2
md: updating md0 RAID superblock on device
md: sdb2 [events: 00000011]<6>(write) sdb2's sb offset: 152191680
md: syncing RAID array md0
md: minimum _guaranteed_ reconstruction speed: 100 KB/sec/disc.
md: using maximum available idle IO bandwith (but not more than 100000 KB/sec) for reconstruction.
md: using 124k window, over a total of 152191488 blocks.
md: sdd2 [events: 00000011]<6>(write) sdd2's sb offset: 152191680
md: sdc2 [events: 00000011]<6>(write) sdc2's sb offset: 152191680
md: sda2 [events: 00000011]<6>(write) sda2's sb offset: 152191680
md: ... autorun DONE.
kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,1), internal journal
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
XFS mounting filesystem md(9,0)
Ending clean XFS mount for filesystem: md(9,0)

Re: siimage and two nics

[J. Ryan Earl]

Daniel Brahneborg wrote:

>I guess I could, I just needed something to install to.
>It's a file server, so it's the SATA disks that will take
>the biggest hit.
>  
>
You should put your busiest disks on the southbridge (via_sata).

>I wouldn't mind using something else, but then I must first
>understand how to get it to stop messing with my PATA hda.
>Would that driver make the SATA disk suddenly appear as IDE
>disks instead of SCSI?
>  
>
I don't understand why that matters.

>Checking... oh, it's 1.06 in Linus 2.4.23 kernel.  The diff
>doesn't seem to be very much, just a check for 3114 and a fix
>for Seagate drives.
>  
>
Have you considered 2.6?  It's looking pretty stable with great hardware 
support.  I'm putting 2.6.0-mm1 on a production server using a RAID1 
setup over the SI3112.  There's also this patch: 
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.0/2.6.0-mm1/broken-out/ide-siimage-stack-fix.patch 
which I have found to be vital for stable operation.  If you read back 
on the archives I included a diff for 2.4.23_pre8

> scsi3 : sata_via
>
>  Vendor: ATA       Model: SAMSUNG SP1614C   Rev: 0.81
>  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 05
>  Vendor: ATA       Model: SAMSUNG SP1614C   Rev: 0.81
>  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 05
>Attached scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
>Attached scsi disk sdb at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
>Attached scsi disk sdc at scsi2, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
>Attached scsi disk sdd at scsi3, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
>SCSI device sda: 312581808 512-byte hdwr sectors (160042 MB)
> sda: sda1 sda2
>SCSI device sdb: 312581808 512-byte hdwr sectors (160042 MB)
> sdb: sdb1 sdb2
>SCSI device sdc: 312581808 512-byte hdwr sectors (160042 MB)
> sdc: sdc1 sdc2
>SCSI device sdd: 312581808 512-byte hdwr sectors (160042 MB)
> sdd: sdd1 sdd2
>  
>

OK.  So you have a 4 160GB SATA drives that show up as sda-sdd using 
libata.  That's cool.  I had problems with the sata_sil driver though, 
it wasn't stable for me.  I'd suggest using the IDE driver until it's 
been worked on more.  It's alpha right now, but the IDE driver is 
production ready by my testing anyway.  You just have to modify your 
raidtab to account for the new device location (hda/hdc or hde/hdg) of 
using the IDE driver.

-ryan

Re: siimage and two nics

[Daniel Brahneborg]

On Fri, Dec 26, 2003 at 05:42:20AM +0000, J. Ryan Earl wrote:
> Daniel Brahneborg wrote:
> 
> >I guess I could, I just needed something to install to.
> >It's a file server, so it's the SATA disks that will take
> >the biggest hit.
>
> You should put your busiest disks on the southbridge (via_sata).

I'll keep that in mind, thanks.

> >I wouldn't mind using something else, but then I must first
> >understand how to get it to stop messing with my PATA hda.
> >Would that driver make the SATA disk suddenly appear as IDE
> >disks instead of SCSI?
>
> I don't understand why that matters.

It doesn't matter if they are IDE or SCSI, as long as they work.

What matters is that I still want to be able to access the small
IDE drive I have on the PATA connector.

> >Checking... oh, it's 1.06 in Linus 2.4.23 kernel.  The diff
> >doesn't seem to be very much, just a check for 3114 and a fix
> >for Seagate drives.
>
> Have you considered 2.6?

I tested it for a while, but had some problems with it.  I'll
try it again and see if it makes any difference.

> >SCSI device sda: 312581808 512-byte hdwr sectors (160042 MB)
> > sda: sda1 sda2
> >SCSI device sdb: 312581808 512-byte hdwr sectors (160042 MB)
> > sdb: sdb1 sdb2
> >SCSI device sdc: 312581808 512-byte hdwr sectors (160042 MB)
> > sdc: sdc1 sdc2
> >SCSI device sdd: 312581808 512-byte hdwr sectors (160042 MB)
> > sdd: sdd1 sdd2
> 
> OK.  So you have a 4 160GB SATA drives that show up as sda-sdd using 
> libata.

Exactly.  Or rather, 4 152GB drives, since Samsung seems to think
that K = 1000. *sigh*

> That's cool.  I had problems with the sata_sil driver though, 
> it wasn't stable for me.  I'd suggest using the IDE driver until it's 
> been worked on more.

How do I find out what happens with the PATA disk when I load the
siimage module?

> It's alpha right now, but the IDE driver is 
> production ready by my testing anyway.  You just have to modify your 
> raidtab to account for the new device location (hda/hdc or hde/hdg) of 
> using the IDE driver.

That's no problem.

Btw, what speed should I be able to get with the siimage module?

/Basic

Re: siimage and two nics

[J. Ryan Earl]

Daniel Brahneborg wrote:

>On Fri, Dec 26, 2003 at 05:42:20AM +0000, J. Ryan Earl wrote:
>  
>
>What matters is that I still want to be able to access the small
>IDE drive I have on the PATA connector.
>  
>
That should not be a problem.  If you build the via82cxxx into the 
kernel and use siimage as a module, the two sata drives should be hde 
and hdg, but you could build the siimage into the kernel and boot of the 
RAID if you wanted too.  Note, starting at A, every other hdX (ie hda, 
hdc, hde, hdg,...) will be a primary mastery.  Starting at B, every 
other hdX is a slave (hdb, hdd, hdf,...).  That's just the way the IDE 
layer handles names.  SATA doesn't have any slaves, it's all 1 disk per 
channel, point-to-point link, so you'll never see any of the "slave" 
harddrive names on a sata drive.  Check the dmesg and ls /proc/ide && 
cat /proc/hdX/model to see what your harddrives have been mapped to.  
Then setup your raidtab, fstab, and bootloader appropraitely.

>  
>
>>>Checking... oh, it's 1.06 in Linus 2.4.23 kernel.  The diff
>>>doesn't seem to be very much, just a check for 3114 and a fix
>>>for Seagate drives.
>>>      
>>>
>>Have you considered 2.6?
>>    
>>
>
>I tested it for a while, but had some problems with it.  I'll
>try it again and see if it makes any difference.
>  
>
I suggest the -mm tree, it includes all the patches for the siimage 
driver, plus many more.  It has been stable in my testing.

>How do I find out what happens with the PATA disk when I load the
>siimage module?
>  
>
See above.

>Btw, what speed should I be able to get with the siimage module?
>  
>
You have to consider I'm using WD360GD "Raptors" and not whatever drive 
you have.  I get 35-55 MB/sec sequential read/write throughput on a 
single disk.  I tested RAID0 and RAID1 on the siimage 3112A (btw A = 
revision 2).  In RAID0, I'm getting about 75MB/sec sequential read/write 
performance (Testbed = AthlonXP 1800 1.53Ghz, 512MB CL2 DDR).  I've seen 
others using this disk off their Southbridge--no 32bit/33MHz PCI 
bottleneck--get 100MB/sec on these with RAID0.  I think bus-speed 
somehow affects RAID0 performance especially with 16MB of coolective 
cache on the RAID drives.  RAID1 looks a lot better though.  I get 
~50MB/sec write--essentially the same as with one disk and in agreement 
with manufacturer's performance claims.  Remember it's writing to both 
disks at once, so really 100MB/s is going across the 133MB/s PCI bus.  A 
single sequential read tops out around 55MB/sec.  However, I can sustain 
2 parallel sequential reads, both at ~50MB/s so I get an aggregate of 
100+MB/s sequential read throughput with RAID1-mirroring.  
Unfortunately, RAID0 also slightly lowered the average number of seeks 
per interval while raising the avereage seek time over a single 
non-RAID'd disk.  RAID1, on the otherhand, increased the average number 
of seeks per interval by 80% over one disk (roughly ~200 seeks/s to 360 
seeks/s) and it lowered avereage seek time 10-50% on reads.  Hello 
database that's answers queries that are 70% SELECT statements.

RAID1 is absolutely perfect for my needs, this will dramatically 
increase my I/O capabilities .  I can't quote you any RAID5 results. 

-ryan

Re: siimage and two nics

[Daniel Brahneborg]

On Sat, Dec 27, 2003 at 12:24:59AM +0000, J. Ryan Earl wrote:
> Daniel Brahneborg wrote:
> 
> >What matters is that I still want to be able to access the small
> >IDE drive I have on the PATA connector.
>
> That should not be a problem.  If you build the via82cxxx into the 
> kernel and use siimage as a module, the two sata drives should be hde 
> and hdg, but you could build the siimage into the kernel and boot of the 
> RAID if you wanted too.

I'm making progress!  I'm using Linus kernel 2.6, have via82cxxx
and siimage built in, no scsi stuff at all, and set the ports and
irq's for ide0, ide1, ide2 and ide3 with Grub.  This makes the
siimage drives end up nicely as ide4 and ide5, or hdi and hdk.
It even allows me to have two network cards without crashing.

When the machine boots I always get a handful of "irq 12: nobody
cared", but most things seem to work fine anyway.  Except, of
course, that I now get corrupt files when reading or writing large
files.  It only seems to appear on the raid system, not the disks
themselves, so I'll check with the raid guys.

I'll try the -mm tree and see if it makes any difference.

> >Btw, what speed should I be able to get with the siimage module?
>
> You have to consider I'm using WD360GD "Raptors" and not whatever drive 
> you have.  I get 35-55 MB/sec sequential read/write throughput on a 
> single disk.

Ok, that's the same as me.  Around 55MB/sec on the Via interface,
around 35MB/sec on the siimage interface, and 25-30MB/sec on the
Raid5 disk.  This is with just a Duron 800MHz, so that's cool.

Tons of thanks for all your help and your suggestions.

/Basic

Re: siimage and two nics

[Daniel Brahneborg]

On Sat, Dec 27, 2003 at 12:24:59AM +0000, J. Ryan Earl wrote:
> I suggest the -mm tree, it includes all the patches for the siimage 
> driver, plus many more.  It has been stable in my testing.

I just tried that, but with the same data corruption problem
as with Linus tree: Writing large files on a raid5 disk causes
random data corruption.

I seem to get less DMA problems now though, which is very nice.

/Basic