Re: mvsas panics and dies when attached to a port extender on newer kernels

[James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>]

On Tue, 2015-04-14 at 14:03 -0700, Adam Talbot wrote:
> To make a very long debugging story short, I think there is an issues/bug
> with the mvsas driver. It works, with older kernels, and breaks on
> newer kernels.
> 
> My Debian Jessie system was running great on a 3.18 kernel.  Changed
> cases to a newer supermicro case with a SAS expander backplane (SAS933EL).  That
> was the only hardware change.  Now, when ever I boot, the system kernel panics.
> 
> 3.2.65-1+deb7u2 works
> 3.9.0 Gentoo CD works
> 3.16+ all fail
> Attached are 3 kernel panics on 3.16+ kernels.
> 
> Motherboard is a Supermicro X8SIE, with a "Marvell Technology Group Ltd.
> 88SE6440 SAS/SATA PCIe controller"
> 
> Is this a known bug?

Well, you're the only person that's reported it so far.

I think based on the above is that your configuration is a single
expander attached SATA device ... and if you move it to be non expander
attached it works fine?

> At this point I have two options:
> Stick with the old kernel (yuck)
> Buy a new card running a better supported chipset
> 
> Any help would be greatly appreciated
> Thanks

You didn't specify: does 3.15 work?  At least the highest working kernel
version would help me narrow down potential problems.

James