BusLogic driver reports non-existent disks since VMware 1.0.4

BusLogic driver reports non-existent disks since VMware 1.0.4

[Daniel Drake]

Hi,

There's no evidence that this is a BusLogic driver bug (as opposed to 
being a VMware bug), but as I couldn't find any mention on this list I 
thought I'd bring it to peoples attention:

If you upgrade from vmware 1.0.3 to 1.0.4, when using the BusLogic 
emulation (as opposed to LSI logic), the kernel reports existence of 
many disks that do not actually exist. Accessing those disks obviously 
causes hangs and error messages.

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/103939?tstart=0&start=0
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=198296

dmesg output from such a system:
https://bugs.gentoo.org/attachment.cgi?id=135371&action=view

This is similar but not the same as another vmware vs scsi driver problem:
http://marc.info/?l=linux-scsi&m=118590789115292&w=2
(that one is different and has been fixed in vmware)

If anyone is interested in investigating, I can pass on patches to 
people who can test them.

Daniel

Re: BusLogic driver reports non-existent disks since VMware 1.0.4

[James Bottomley]

On Sun, 2008-03-16 at 20:30 +0000, Daniel Drake wrote:
> There's no evidence that this is a BusLogic driver bug (as opposed to 
> being a VMware bug), but as I couldn't find any mention on this list I 
> thought I'd bring it to peoples attention:
> 
> If you upgrade from vmware 1.0.3 to 1.0.4, when using the BusLogic 
> emulation (as opposed to LSI logic), the kernel reports existence of 
> many disks that do not actually exist. Accessing those disks obviously 
> causes hangs and error messages.
> 
> http://communities.vmware.com/thread/103939?tstart=0&start=0
> https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=198296
> 
> dmesg output from such a system:
> https://bugs.gentoo.org/attachment.cgi?id=135371&action=view
> 
> This is similar but not the same as another vmware vs scsi driver problem:
> http://marc.info/?l=linux-scsi&m=118590789115292&w=2
> (that one is different and has been fixed in vmware)
> 
> If anyone is interested in investigating, I can pass on patches to 
> people who can test them.

It does rather look like a vmware emulation problem.  The Short INQUIRY
read:

scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     VMware,  VMware Virtual S 1.0  PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
scsi scan: INQUIRY result too short (5), using 36
scsi 0:0:1:0: Direct-Access                                    PQ: 0 ANSI: 0

Implies the inquiry returned all zeros (length of 5 is because that's
the offset into the INQUIRY of the additional length), which is also a
strong indicator of a vmware issue.

There have been reports of BusLogic Flashpoint working, but that's
practically a separate driver.  The only real way to be sure is for
someone to try it out with a real BT-958 and see.

James