Re: IRQ issues with multiple SiI3114's on Kernel 3.2

[Stan Hoeppner <stan@hardwarefreak.com>]

On 7/28/2012 6:41 PM, Stirling Westrup wrote:

> Okay, it looks like its a known hardware chipset problem, and was
> first reported 6-months ago.
> 
> It affects all PCI cards in Asus Sandy-Bridge Motherboards. No known
> fix as of yet.
> 
> https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/1/30/216

At least our discussion got you looking in multiple directions, one of
which led you to this information.

Given the problem is related to legacy PCI INTx sharing/routing, whether
on the PCI or PCIe bus, I'd recommend you step up to a high quality PCIe
x8 SAS/SATA HBA, such as the LSI 9211-8i PCIe x8, which supports MSI-X
and should instantly solve your problem.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118112

You'll need two breakout cables:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116098

This solution will set you back almost $300 USD.  I just did some
research on the Syba 4 port SiI 3124 PCIe x1 card.  The SiI 3124 is a
native PCI/X chip, thus the board uses a PCI-X to PCIe bridge chip which
hides under the large heatsink.  Thus this card will not work, as it
uses legacy PCI interrupts:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124027

I also looked at the Syba and Adaptec Marvell PCIe x1 SATAII 4 port
cards.  While the Marvell chip is native PCIe I'm unable to confirm it
supports MSI/X.  And given these cards run $80-90, that's $160-180 for
two of them.  The LSI above is pretty much guaranteed to work for ~$100
more.  What's your reputation with your client worth?

Speaking of which, don't even look at the $110 8 port Supermicro
SAS/SATA controller.  It uses the Marvell SAS chip.  Although the chip
itself is fine and works with Windows, the Linux driver *will* eat your
data, all the way up to kernel 3.4.  I've personally rectified this
situation for a half dozen users who bought this SM SAS board on price
alone.  I converted them all to LSI HBAs and no problems since.  The
solution cost them 2-3x as much but they're all happy because it simply
works reliably, and fast.

Or you can start swapping $150+ motherboards until you find one that
works with those $20 Syba 3114 cards.  But then you need to ask
yourself, how much is your time worth.  You could easily burn 20 or more
hours going that route.

Get the LSI and be done with this.

-- 
Stan