Re: 2.4.21-pre4: PDC ide driver problems with shared interrupts

[Edward King <edk@cendatsys.com>]

John:

Quick fix to the problem is remove devfs -- it appears that the devfs 
code doesn't like to have the raid layered on top of it, and it loses 
interrupts.

I've got two systems now running 4 200GB WD's connected to a single 
promise card (ATA100/TX2)  with the booting drive (a 5th drive) attached 
to the motherboard.  The raid works flawlessly and is fast -- I imagine 
there'd be a speedup by keeping all the drives as master (with 2 pdc's) 
and it would be more robust, but those aren't issues.

Hope this helps -- I'll post this to the mailing list to help anyone 
else with this problem.

- Ed

John V. Martinez wrote:

> Hi Ed,
>
> I found a linux-kernel post you made back in March about problems 
> running two Promise IDE controllers in the same system. I have a 
> similar configuration, (and a similar problem,) and I was wondering if 
> you ever found a solution, or if one of the more recent 2.4.21-foo 
> kernels solved it for you.
>
> (I have two Promise ATA-100/TX2 (20268 chip) controllers, and I have 
> one 200GB WD drive as a single master on each channel. The two 
> controllers are sharing interrupts with othwer cards, but not with 
> each other. I can access each disk individually, but when I tried to 
> make them work hard: mkraid a RAID5 array using these four drives, the 
> system freezes HARD until I hit the big red button. [Then it reboots, 
> spots the raid superblock, tries to rebuild my RAID5 array, and 
> freezes again, until I get a clue and unplug the drives in question 
> while powered down :^))
>
> Anyway, if you have any more insight into this problem than you did in 
> March, and care to share, I'd be much obliged.
>
> Cheers,
>
> -(-- John