Software RAID5, promise IDE and system freeze...

Software RAID5, promise IDE and system freeze...

[Lars Schimmer]

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Hi!

My system freeze everytime I try to setup a software RAID5 over more
than 1 PCI Promise IDE controller.
Setup:
Asus A7v8x motherboard
with 2 HDs: one system, one RAID
with 2 SATA:RAID
with old PCI graphicscard
with 3com LAN card
with 2 U133TX2 Promise IDE RAID with each 2 HDs , so 4 HDs for RAID
with 1 U100TX2 Promise with 2 HDs for RAID

Gives 9 HDs for RAID5. Each HD is Master on IDE bus.

When building a raid with the 3 HDs on MoBo & SATA and 2 HDs of ONE of
these 3 promise, the RAID works flawless.
But if I try to build a RAID over HDs of 2 of these Promise PCI Cards,
the system freeze EVERYTIME.
System used: Debian sarge, fresh install from friday, raidtools2 and
kerne 2.4.27

Does ANYONE have any hints?
Or does anyone uses a RAID over 2 or more Promise PCI Cards?

Thx
Lars
- --
- -----------------------------------------------------------------
Technische Universität Braunschweig, Institut für Computergraphik
Tel.: +49 531 391-2109            E-Mail: schimmer@cg.cs.tu-bs.de
PGP-Key-ID: 0xB87A0E03


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Re: Software RAID5, promise IDE and system freeze...

[Brad Campbell]

Lars Schimmer wrote:

> When building a raid with the 3 HDs on MoBo & SATA and 2 HDs of ONE of
> these 3 promise, the RAID works flawless.
> But if I try to build a RAID over HDs of 2 of these Promise PCI Cards,
> the system freeze EVERYTIME.
> System used: Debian sarge, fresh install from friday, raidtools2 and
> kerne 2.4.27
> 
> Does ANYONE have any hints?

Do you have alt-sysrq support compiled in?

If so, does alt-sysrq-t give you any information or is it a complete hard lock.

If it's a hard lock, can you enable the NMI oopser to try and find out where the system is freezing?

> Or does anyone uses a RAID over 2 or more Promise PCI Cards?

Yes, but SATA cards.

Regards,
Brad

Re: Software RAID5, promise IDE and system freeze...

[Gordon Henderson]

On Mon, 30 Aug 2004, Lars Schimmer wrote:

> Does ANYONE have any hints?
> Or does anyone uses a RAID over 2 or more Promise PCI Cards?

I have a couple of system with Promise cards PCI cards - PATA rather than
SATA though.

I don't know the mobo type offhand, but they are dual Athlons.

One system: " PCI cards, one on-board unit.

    Unknown mass storage controller: Promise Technology, Inc. 20269
	 (rev 2).

    Unknown mass storage controller: Promise Technology, Inc. 20269 (#2)
	(rev 2).

    RAID bus controller: Promise Technology, Inc. PDC20276 IDE (rev 1).


The other system is has 2 PCI cards and doesn't use the on-board.

Both systems debian woody with 2.4.26.

They work!

But problems I had were to do with the crappy interrupt controller on the
motherboard. I "solved" it by trying to move the PCI cards into different
slots to make sure every device gets its own interrupt.

/proc/interrupts on one box: (4 drives)

           CPU0       CPU1
  0:  230964376  232599896    IO-APIC-edge  timer
  1:        342        446    IO-APIC-edge  keyboard
  2:          0          0          XT-PIC  cascade
 14:   44802784   45276480    IO-APIC-edge  ide0
 15:   46082474   46467144    IO-APIC-edge  ide1
 16:   48909448   49416438   IO-APIC-level  ide2
 17:   47418987   47872232   IO-APIC-level  ide4
 18:      72851      72345   IO-APIC-level  aic7xxx
 19:  768810149  768019180   IO-APIC-level  aic7xxx, eth0
NMI:          0          0
LOC:  463544904  463544903
ERR:          6
MIS:        753

Not the ERR and MIS interrupts.

The other box (5 drives)

           CPU0       CPU1
  0:  319788706  319895418    IO-APIC-edge  timer
  1:          6          4    IO-APIC-edge  keyboard
  2:          0          0          XT-PIC  cascade
 16:  714216926  714017185   IO-APIC-level  aic7xxx, eth0
 17:   70304223   69973598   IO-APIC-level  ide2, ide3
 18:   68103824   67951706   IO-APIC-level  ide4, ide5, ide6
NMI:          0          0
LOC:  639711160  639711159
ERR:        206
MIS:     245234

No matter what I tried on this box I couldn't separate the interrupts.

Both these boxes seem to work just fine, (heavy duty NSF/Samba servers)
uptime noswis 74 days on both. After I did the PCI card and drive
shuffling (only one drive per card, even though it has 2 controllers) but
before that I had performance problems and the occasional DMA timeout from
the drives.

The times I'd get a full crash were when doing a full fsck on the drives -
that was my go/no-go test. The system would just stop. No OOPS, nothing.
Just a total lock-up. If the raid partition survived a full fsck then it
was as good a test as any as far as I was concerned.. (I wish I knew how
fsck accessed the drives, but it must be doing it in some way to trigger
some timing/interrupt crash problem).

One of these systems has a known bug in the interrupt controller that
requires a mouse to beplugged in. You'll have to google for this though, I
don't have the references to-hand about this "feature".

Not sure if this is of any help to you though!

Gordon

Re: Software RAID5, promise IDE and system freeze...

[Andrew Walrond]

On Monday 30 Aug 2004 09:38, Lars Schimmer wrote:
> System used: Debian sarge, fresh install from friday, raidtools2 and
> kerne 2.4.27
>
> Does ANYONE have any hints?

I had a very similar problem, solved by disabling ACPI. It was interrupt 
routing related.

So, is ACPI compiled into your kernel?
If so, try booting with acpi=nopci or acpi=off
(I think thats correct; check in Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt)

(Most ACPI problems are due to old/buggy bios. If you enable ACPI, always 
flash latest bios from your mobo's website.)

Or it might be something completely different :)

Andrew Walrond

Re: Software RAID5, promise IDE and system freeze-SOLVED?!

[Lars Schimmer]

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Hash: SHA1

Lars Schimmer wrote:
| Hi!
|
| My system freeze everytime I try to setup a software RAID5 over more
| than 1 PCI Promise IDE controller.
| Setup:
| Asus A7v8x motherboard
| with 2 HDs: one system, one RAID
| with 2 SATA:RAID
| with old PCI graphicscard
| with 3com LAN card
| with 2 U133TX2 Promise IDE RAID with each 2 HDs , so 4 HDs for RAID
| with 1 U100TX2 Promise with 2 HDs for RAID
|
| Gives 9 HDs for RAID5. Each HD is Master on IDE bus.
|
| When building a raid with the 3 HDs on MoBo & SATA and 2 HDs of ONE of
| these 3 promise, the RAID works flawless.
| But if I try to build a RAID over HDs of 2 of these Promise PCI Cards,
| the system freeze EVERYTIME.
| System used: Debian sarge, fresh install from friday, raidtools2 and
| kerne 2.4.27
|
| Does ANYONE have any hints?
| Or does anyone uses a RAID over 2 or more Promise PCI Cards?

After trying some more Options I installed kernel 2.6.7-1 from sarge and
now it works, the PC creates the RAID5.
Lets wait til it's ready, but it's far more done than under 2.4.x

| Thx
| Lars

Cya
Lars
- --
- -----------------------------------------------------------------
Technische Universität Braunschweig, Institut für Computergraphik
Tel.: +49 531 391-2109            E-Mail: schimmer@cg.cs.tu-bs.de
PGP-Key-ID: 0xB87A0E03


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