Re: Backplane mystery

[Yan Seiner <yan@seiner.com>]

Mark Lord wrote:
> Yan Seiner wrote:
>> I have an external enclosure with an SATA backplane with 20 drive 
>> slots.  I am using 4 port multipliers to drive all 20 slots.
>>
>> One set of 5 slots connected to a single port multiplier always fails 
>> with
>> .....
<snippage>
>>
>>
>> 02:00.0 Mass storage controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3132 Serial 
>> ATA Raid II Controller (rev 01)
>>
>> The system sees 3 port multipliers; not 4 as it should:
>>
>> [   82.488354] ata4.15: Port Multiplier 1.1, 0x1095:0x3726 r23, 6 
>> ports, feat 0x1/0x9
>> [   82.488507] ata3.15: Port Multiplier 1.1, 0x1095:0x3726 r23, 6 
>> ports, feat 0x1/0x9
>> [   82.796408] ata1.15: Port Multiplier 1.1, 0x1095:0x3726 r23, 6 
>> ports, feat 0x1/0x9
>>
>> I suspect it's cabling length as the 5 "dead" slots are the farthest 
>> down the backplane but swapping cables randomly just doesn't seem 
>> like a good approach.
>>
>> What's my next step?
> ..
>
> Perhaps try a different chipset controller card,
> in hope that it will have stronger drive capability?
OK, did that.  No joy.

[   82.533526] ata3: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
[   82.533606] ata3: link online but device misclassified, retrying
[   82.533686] ata3: reset failed (errno=-11), retrying in 9 secs

Is there some way to be more forceful with the reset?  I suspect one of 
the port multiplier boards is bad at this point.  Is there some way to 
force a hard reset from user space?  What can I from userspace short of 
hitting the thing with a hammer?

--Yan


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