2.4.5-ac3: qlogic corruption on alpha

2.4.5-ac3: qlogic corruption on alpha

[Tom Vier]

i narrowed down some corruption i was having. it only happens on drives
attached to my qlogic isp card. 2.2 has no problem, and in 2.4.5-ac3 my
sym53c875 works fine. this machine is an alpha miata. it only happens when
writing out a lot to disk. eg, untarring a kernel tarball, restoring a
backup. anyone else see this?

-- 
Tom Vier <tmv5@home.com>
DSA Key id 0x27371A2C

Re: 2.4.5-ac3: qlogic corruption on alpha

[Jeff Garzik]

Tom Vier wrote:
> i narrowed down some corruption i was having. it only happens on drives
> attached to my qlogic isp card. 2.2 has no problem, and in 2.4.5-ac3 my
> sym53c875 works fine. this machine is an alpha miata. it only happens when
> writing out a lot to disk. eg, untarring a kernel tarball, restoring a
> backup. anyone else see this?

Is this reproducible?

A patch went into ac3 which attempts to address qlogicisp problems on
Alpha.  It originated from the nether regions deep inside Compaq,
original source unknown.  There is a -extraordinarily slight-
possibility this patch (which simply adds "mb()") causes problems. 
However, it is more likely that the patch is harmless but also useless,
not fixing the real problem.

Other questions - is your machine SMP?  How much RAM?

-- 
Jeff Garzik      | Disbelief, that's why you fail.
Building 1024    |
MandrakeSoft     |

Re: 2.4.5-ac3: qlogic corruption on alpha

[Tom Vier]

On Tue, May 29, 2001 at 09:17:45PM -0400, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Tom Vier wrote:
> > i narrowed down some corruption i was having. it only happens on drives
> > attached to my qlogic isp card. 2.2 has no problem, and in 2.4.5-ac3 my
> > sym53c875 works fine. this machine is an alpha miata. it only happens when
> > writing out a lot to disk. eg, untarring a kernel tarball, restoring a
> > backup. anyone else see this?
> 
> Is this reproducible?

yes. by restoring a backup from tape. i tried cat /dev/zero > /dev/sdb1,
but that wasn't enough to trigger any corruption (i correctly wrote all
zeros). actually, now that i think about it, a good chunk of /dev/sdb2 was
cached when i read it back, so that wasn't a very good test. i definetly get
corruption under 2.4.5-ac4.

<snip>

> Other questions - is your machine SMP?  How much RAM?

UP, half gig.

-- 
Tom Vier <tmv5@home.com>
DSA Key id 0x27371A2C

Re: 2.4.5-ac3: qlogic corruption on alpha

[Jeff Garzik]

Tom Vier wrote:
> 
> i narrowed down some corruption i was having. it only happens on drives
> attached to my qlogic isp card. 2.2 has no problem, and in 2.4.5-ac3 my
> sym53c875 works fine. this machine is an alpha miata. it only happens when
> writing out a lot to disk. eg, untarring a kernel tarball, restoring a
> backup. anyone else see this?

Also, what compiler are you using?  Depending on your current compiler,
switching to another compiler according to one of the following
permutations would be very instructive for us debugging the problem, at
least.

	gcc-2.96-RH -> gcc-2.95.3
	gcc-2.95.2 -> gcc-2.95.3
	gcc-2.95.3 -> egcs-1.1.2

Regards,

	Jeff


-- 
Jeff Garzik      | Disbelief, that's why you fail.
Building 1024    |
MandrakeSoft     |

Re: 2.4.5-ac3: qlogic corruption on alpha

[Tom Vier]

On Tue, May 29, 2001 at 10:05:27PM -0400, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Also, what compiler are you using?  Depending on your current compiler,
> switching to another compiler according to one of the following
> permutations would be very instructive for us debugging the problem, at
> least.

debian 2.25.2 20000220

> 	gcc-2.96-RH -> gcc-2.95.3
> 	gcc-2.95.2 -> gcc-2.95.3
> 	gcc-2.95.3 -> egcs-1.1.2

i'll give another one a try, tomorrow.

-- 
Tom Vier <tmv5@home.com>
DSA Key id 0x27371A2C