Re: Raid6 array crashed-- 4-disk failure...(?)

[Andre Noll <maan@systemlinux.org>]

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On 19:14, Maarten wrote:
> >Are you also using an Intel-based SATA chip (please send the output
> >of lspci -v)?  Also, which kernel version are you using?
> 
> No, my chipset is a VIA one. Because the VIA SATA chips/drivers are 
> terrible, I use only SATA PCI cards with Sil chipsets.  Believe it or 
> not I have good/excellent experiences with these. The driver is quite 
> stable, better than everything else I tried.
> 
> apoc log # lspci
> 00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8377 [KT400/KT600 AGP] 
> Host Bridge (rev 80)
> 00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI Bridge
> 00:07.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3114 
> [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)
> 00:08.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3114 
> [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)
> 00:09.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3114 
> [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)
> 00:0a.0 RAID bus controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3124 PCI-X Serial 
> ATA Controller (rev 02)
> 00:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8169 
> Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10)
> 00:0f.0 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. 
> VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
> 00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge 
> [KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South]
> 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage XL AGP 2X 
> (rev 65)
> 
> Linux apoc 2.6.23-gentoo-r3 #2 Fri Apr 25 11:09:37 CEST 2008 i686 AMD 
> Sempron(tm) 2200+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

My machine is running vanilla 2.6.25.4, i.e. we're using different
SATA drivers and different kernels.

While looking at the logs I found a plenty of those:

	set_rtc_mmss: can't update from 150 to 43

And indeed this machine started to have serious problems with its
clock since last weekend. I found it off by 12 hours yesterday and it
is still runing much too fast so that ntp is not working any more. I'm
currently setting the time with a script in 10min intervals...

Were you also seeing such messages during/after the hard disk failures?

> I'm considering a 8/12/16 port Areca controller but a few practicalities 
> hold me back: the price, and the fact I would need a PCI-X slot unless I 
> want to kill performance by a factor of 10. Also, the fact that I then 
> cannot use software raid anymore tends to scare me a little: You never 
> know how firmware reacts in the more 'interesting' circumstances, and 
> you lose control over it...

You could use jbod mode (or create single-disk "raid arrays") with
Areca or 3ware controllers and use software raid on top of that.

Andre
-- 
The only person who always got his work done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe

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