Re: DAC960 at 2.5.50

Re: DAC960 at 2.5.50

[Samium Gromoff]

 > Samium Gromoff...
> > > <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
> > >         [PATCH] update to OSDL DAC960 driver
> > >
> > >         Its not perfect but it works
> >    is it supposed to blow my data, or is it relatively safe to use?
>
> There have been a few poeple using this patch for about 5 versions of
> 2.5 so far.  I haven't done heavy testing myself, just booting and doing
> some other testing of modules and drivers.  I am running the DAC960 on
> my root/boot filesystem and haven't seen any problems yet.
  thank you. i`ll join the 2.5 DAC user crowd soon then :-)

---
regards,
   Samium Gromoff
_____________________________________

Re: DAC960 at 2.5.50

[Dave Olien]

Let me know if you find any problems at all.  I'll try to
address them.

I think the biggest "imperfection" is just the coding style of
the whole driver.  I might submit some patches over time to clean
up coding style.

The next problem is that it doesn't handle media errors yet.
If you have a read or write failure because a sector on your disk
is bad, it fails the entire read or write. With all the coalescing
of requests that the block layer does, this might fail ALL of a
really large transfer just because one sector is bad.

I'm working on a patch that retries failures section at a time,
so that the failure will be more closely limited to the sector 
that is bad.


On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 06:56:22PM +0300, Samium Gromoff wrote:
>  > Samium Gromoff...
> > > > <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
> > > >         [PATCH] update to OSDL DAC960 driver
> > > >
> > > >         Its not perfect but it works
> > >    is it supposed to blow my data, or is it relatively safe to use?
> >
> > There have been a few poeple using this patch for about 5 versions of
> > 2.5 so far.  I haven't done heavy testing myself, just booting and doing
> > some other testing of modules and drivers.  I am running the DAC960 on
> > my root/boot filesystem and haven't seen any problems yet.
>   thank you. i`ll join the 2.5 DAC user crowd soon then :-)
> 
> ---
> regards,
>    Samium Gromoff
> _____________________________________
> 
> -
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Re: DAC960 at 2.5.50

[Samium Gromoff]

> Let me know if you find any problems at all.  I'll try to
> address them.

  Actually the thing (DAC960-PL, one ibm 10k rpm drive) just booted up and
worked like a charm. Indeed it`s not a hardcore setup, yet i`m happy
anyway :-)

  Although i`ll keep running 2.4 until alsa isapnp breakage will get fixed up.

  Anyhow thank you for the finally working driver which finally enabled me
to check bloody 2.5 at home :-)

regards, Samium Gromoff

Monitor utility (was Re: DAC960 at 2.5.50)

[Kevin Brosius]

Dave, all,
  Did you know about the DAC960 monitor utility?  I just ran across it
in the SuSE install set.  It's available from
http://varmon.sourceforge.net/

Looks like it's not being maintained anymore (and probably won't work
with the 2.5 driver yet?)

-- 
Kevin


Dave Olien wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Let me know if you find any problems at all.  I'll try to
> address them.
> 
> I think the biggest "imperfection" is just the coding style of
> the whole driver.  I might submit some patches over time to clean
> up coding style.
> 
> The next problem is that it doesn't handle media errors yet.
> If you have a read or write failure because a sector on your disk
> is bad, it fails the entire read or write. With all the coalescing
> of requests that the block layer does, this might fail ALL of a
> really large transfer just because one sector is bad.
> 
> I'm working on a patch that retries failures section at a time,
> so that the failure will be more closely limited to the sector
> that is bad.
> 
> On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 06:56:22PM +0300, Samium Gromoff wrote:
> >  > Samium Gromoff...
> > > > > <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
> > > > >         [PATCH] update to OSDL DAC960 driver
> > > > >
> > > > >         Its not perfect but it works
> > > >    is it supposed to blow my data, or is it relatively safe to use?
> > >
> > > There have been a few poeple using this patch for about 5 versions of
> > > 2.5 so far.  I haven't done heavy testing myself, just booting and doing
> > > some other testing of modules and drivers.  I am running the DAC960 on
> > > my root/boot filesystem and haven't seen any problems yet.
> >   thank you. i`ll join the 2.5 DAC user crowd soon then :-)
> >
> > ---
> > regards,
> >    Samium Gromoff

Re: Monitor utility (was Re: DAC960 at 2.5.50)

[Samium Gromoff]

> Dave, all,
>  Did you know about the DAC960 monitor utility?  I just ran across it
> in the SuSE install set.  It's available from
> http://varmon.sourceforge.net/
> 
> Looks like it's not being maintained anymore (and probably won't work
> with the 2.5 driver yet?)
  i`m volunteering to test it as soon as its ported
>
> --
> Kevin

regards, Samium Gromoff

Re: Monitor utility (was Re: DAC960 at 2.5.50)

[Randy.Dunlap]

On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Samium Gromoff wrote:

| > Dave, all,
| >  Did you know about the DAC960 monitor utility?  I just ran across it
| > in the SuSE install set.  It's available from
| > http://varmon.sourceforge.net/
| >
| > Looks like it's not being maintained anymore (and probably won't work
| > with the 2.5 driver yet?)
|   i`m volunteering to test it as soon as its ported

Did anyone volunteer to update it?
Looks like a good idea...

-- 
~Randy

Re: Monitor utility (was Re: DAC960 at 2.5.50)

[Dave Olien]

I hadn't seen it before.  I'll grab it and give it
a look.  I'm assuming it uses ioctl() calls to do
its dirty work.  In that case, it should mostly
still work.  I might have broken something around
the edges.  I also observed some races in the driver
between its ioctl() functions and some timer-driven
health monitoring functions that concerned me.
I'll look those over again more carefully.

Give me a day or so, and I'll let you know how
things look.

I've heard of something Mylex provides called
"global array manager" that runs on Linux.  But, I
think it requires a graphical front end on a windows
box.  I don't think it's open source either.
I'll look it over as a second priority after
this one.

Dave

On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 07:17:34AM -0500, Kevin Brosius wrote:
> Dave, all,
>   Did you know about the DAC960 monitor utility?  I just ran across it
> in the SuSE install set.  It's available from
> http://varmon.sourceforge.net/
> 
> Looks like it's not being maintained anymore (and probably won't work
> with the 2.5 driver yet?)
> 
> -- 
> Kevin
> 
> 
> Dave Olien wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Let me know if you find any problems at all.  I'll try to
> > address them.
> > 
> > I think the biggest "imperfection" is just the coding style of
> > the whole driver.  I might submit some patches over time to clean
> > up coding style.
> > 
> > The next problem is that it doesn't handle media errors yet.
> > If you have a read or write failure because a sector on your disk
> > is bad, it fails the entire read or write. With all the coalescing
> > of requests that the block layer does, this might fail ALL of a
> > really large transfer just because one sector is bad.
> > 
> > I'm working on a patch that retries failures section at a time,
> > so that the failure will be more closely limited to the sector
> > that is bad.
> > 
> > On Thu, Nov 28, 2002 at 06:56:22PM +0300, Samium Gromoff wrote:
> > >  > Samium Gromoff...
> > > > > > <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
> > > > > >         [PATCH] update to OSDL DAC960 driver
> > > > > >
> > > > > >         Its not perfect but it works
> > > > >    is it supposed to blow my data, or is it relatively safe to use?
> > > >
> > > > There have been a few poeple using this patch for about 5 versions of
> > > > 2.5 so far.  I haven't done heavy testing myself, just booting and doing
> > > > some other testing of modules and drivers.  I am running the DAC960 on
> > > > my root/boot filesystem and haven't seen any problems yet.
> > >   thank you. i`ll join the 2.5 DAC user crowd soon then :-)
> > >
> > > ---
> > > regards,
> > >    Samium Gromoff
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/

Re: Monitor utility (was Re: DAC960 at 2.5.50)

[Mihai RUSU]

On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Dave Olien wrote:

....
> I've heard of something Mylex provides called
> "global array manager" that runs on Linux.  But, I
> think it requires a graphical front end on a windows
> box.  I don't think it's open source either.
> I'll look it over as a second priority after
> this one.
>
> Dave
>

Hi Dave

Yes, their software its pretty cool and its the only choice for using some
of the features of the DAC960 (ex. MORE, setting queue tag len for single
hdd, write-back cache for logical and physical drives, very nice event
viewer, full SNMP variables exporting). They provide native linux
drivers/server and win32 client (inside a rpm and using wine to start
itself). Except for some minor visual problems the GAM client works pretty
well with wine.

I sugest you to try it out.

----------------------------
Mihai RUSU

Disclaimer: Any views or opinions presented within this e-mail are solely
those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of any company,
unless otherwise specifically stated.

Re: Monitor utility (was Re: DAC960 at 2.5.50)

[Dave Olien]

Thanks, I'll give it a try!

I was just playing with varmon.
It's OK.  It seems to do the same set of things
that I can do through the /proc/rd/c0/user_command
interface.  I can take drives offline, put them
back online, make drives standby, do consistency
checks.

But, I can't delete or create logical devices,
I'm forced to do that through the Mylex BIOS during
system boot.

I've not given a lot of thought to where those
restrictions come from.  Certainly part of the
problem is a lack of specifications for Mylex.

It'd be really nice of global array manager could
do these things.

I'll give it a try.

On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 09:21:11PM +0200, Mihai RUSU wrote:
> On Thu, 5 Dec 2002, Dave Olien wrote:
> 
> ....
> > I've heard of something Mylex provides called
> > "global array manager" that runs on Linux.  But, I
> > think it requires a graphical front end on a windows
> > box.  I don't think it's open source either.
> > I'll look it over as a second priority after
> > this one.
> >
> > Dave
> >
> 
> Hi Dave
> 
> Yes, their software its pretty cool and its the only choice for using some
> of the features of the DAC960 (ex. MORE, setting queue tag len for single
> hdd, write-back cache for logical and physical drives, very nice event
> viewer, full SNMP variables exporting). They provide native linux
> drivers/server and win32 client (inside a rpm and using wine to start
> itself). Except for some minor visual problems the GAM client works pretty
> well with wine.
> 
> I sugest you to try it out.
> 
> ----------------------------
> Mihai RUSU
> 
> Disclaimer: Any views or opinions presented within this e-mail are solely
> those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of any company,
> unless otherwise specifically stated.