Re: Problems with multiple Promise SATA150 TX4 cards

[David Greaves <david@dgreaves.com>]

Hi all

Have you seen other similar reports coming in recently?
I've got a similar problem and have been exchanging emails off-list with
Mark.

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=113769509617034&w=2

I've cc'ed linux-ide - suggest you re-post your report their too - maybe
reply to this to keep the thread?

Uninformed speculation and grasping at straws leads me to consider that
the problem may be related to having 2 libata sata_xxx drivers loaded at
once.

David
PS Of course it may just be a slew of people with PSU problems...

Brad Campbell wrote:

> Mark Hahn wrote:
>
>>> So, I bought another TX4 card and another 4 SATA drives and plonked
>>> them in the machine, thinking it would be as easy as the last time I
>>> did it (going from 4 to 8 drives).
>>
>>
>> 4 drives is easy; 8 is pushing it; 12 requires a fairly heroic system...
>
>
> I have 3 cards with 12 drives in one box, and 4 card with 15 drives in
> another.
> They work just dandy. They are not the fastest machines in the world,
> and the PCI but sometime groans under the strain, but it's reliable
> and error-free.
>
>>> The first problem is that the Promise cards' onboard BIOS(es) only
>>> recognise(s) (or, at least, list) 8 of the 12 drives in the machine
>>> at boot.  However, once Linux has booted it detects all three cards
>>> and all twelve drives, so this is a relatively insignificant issue.
>>
>>
>> sounds like a spinup time on marginal power to me.
>
>
> No, it's a limitation of the Promise BIOS on the cards, it will only
> detect a maximum of 8 drives. I had a quick convo with tech support
> from Promise over this and they told me they don't support more than
> one card in a machine in any case. (Which is odd given they advertise
> the ability to RAID-5 across 2 cards!)
>
> I used the BIOS detection to get to the drives in DOS once (when I was
> playing with SpinRite) and found the easiest way to get to the last
> drives was just to pop the 1st 4 out of their hotswap cages and
> re-boot. The BIOS just registers the first 8 drives it can find.
>
> <snipped the rest about power issues>
>
> Which could all be good stuff, but I doubt it in this case. If the PSU
> can happily spin up 12 drives at once, then while they are actually
> running the load is significantly less. Unless it's a nasty cheap PSU
> I'd look elsewhere. Given the problem can be triggered by
> "Additionally, a dd to only /dev/sd[abcd] with no other system
> activity also produces the errors - again within seconds.", implying
> the other drives are idle and consuming minimum power, I'd be looking
> elsewhere.
>
> Can you send an lspci -vv please? I did have some strange problems
> with the BIOS setting up weird timing modes on some of the cards. This
> did not present a reliability problem for me, just performance however.
>
> My 1st quick and dirty test would be to boot with a UP kernel. (Only
> because that is all I have also) And to try a vanilla kernel.org
> kernel rather than the Redhat one. (I have one machine on 2.6.10 and
> one on 2.6.15-git11. Both are solid)
>
> bklaptop:~>ssh storage1 uname -a
> Linux storage1 2.6.15-git11 #1 Sun Jan 15 22:25:19 GST 2006 i686
> GNU/Linux
> bklaptop:~>ssh srv uname -a
> Linux srv 2.6.10 #4 Mon Feb 14 23:10:38 GST 2005 i686 GNU/Linux
>
> Are you using the cards in standard PCI 33Mhz Slots? I recall an issue
> a while ago where someone had a big problem with the cards in 66Mhz
> Slots.
>
> Another test I'd like you to try if you would, is place one or two
> drives on each controller, so you only have 3 in the system.. and then
> try to reproduce the error.
>
> Brad



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