Re: AIC + RAID1 error? (was: Re: aic7xxx errors)

[SPATZ1@t-online.de (Frank Schneider)]

"Justin T. Gibbs" schrieb:
> 
> >Okay, I had it again today:
> 
> You need to be running with aic7xxx=verbose for these messages to be
> useful.  In the 6.2.2 driver release I've turned these messages on
> by default.

Could you please shortly explain what this option does...(before it
fills my logfiles with notes "succesfully wrote 1 Byte to disk abc"..:-)
i had recently also some problems with aic7xxx, but they where due to a
misconfigured scsi-bus and perhaps a bad drive (is still under test), so
i enabled scsi error logging in the kernel (2.4.3, RH7.1) and by sending
the following strings to /proc/scsi/scsi:

/bin/echo "scsi log error 5" > /proc/scsi/scsi
/bin/echo "scsi log mlqueue 3" > /proc/scsi/scsi
/bin/echo "scsi log hlcomplete 1" > /proc/scsi/scsi
/bin/echo "scsi log scan 5" > /proc/scsi/scsi

But it did not give me that kind of info i wanted to see...does the
"aic7xxx=verbose" something similar or something completly different ?
 
> >Kernel was 2.4.9ac9 with (new) AIC driver 6.2.1, compiled with "Maximum
> >Number of TCQ Commands per Device" set to 64.
> 
> This is 8 times the tag load the old driver defaults to.

Thats true, and e.g., my relatively new IBM-drives (DGHS18V, 2x
DNES-309170W,  DDRS-39130W, all Server-disks according to IBM) can only
64...and the kernel complains, if i compile it with 255 and locks to
64...as i have played with this feature a while ago, i did not realize a
big performance-plus from 8 to 64, so i switched to 32...and i would go
down to <8 if i where in doubt....

> >So I compiled the same kernel with the old AIC driver and it works fine.

Test it longer and under load...i also "cured" a bad scsi-bus by
switching drivers one time...sometimes it really seems to work...for
some days...:-)
 
> Which may be due to a lighter load on the drive.  Its hard to say without
> the verbose messages and the full dmesg for the machine.  You're IBM drive
> may be running the "if I miss a seek, I fall off the bus" firmware where
> the bug is only triggered under high load.  Send the dmesg output and we'll
> see.

Solong...
Frank.

--
Frank Schneider, <SPATZ1@T-ONLINE.DE>.                           
Microsoft isn't the answer.
Microsoft is the question, and the answer is NO.
... -.-