Re: sata_nv + SMP = broken?

[Vladimir Lazarenko <vlad@lazarenko.net>]

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>>>Yesterday I've tried launching various kernels on Ahtlon64 Dual-core 
>>>X2 3800+ with MSI Neo4 Platinum SLI motherboard.
>>>
>>>The results were a total catastrophica failure. As soon as I enable 
>>>SMP in the kernel, the sata driver would randomly hang after a bit of 
>>>disk activity.
>>>
>>>Whenever apic is enabled, the system won't even be able to boot up 
>>>completely, and will hang VERY soon. Whenever I disable apic, the 
>>>system is able to bootup, but when the software mirror that I use will 
>>>try to resync for 2-3-10 mins, it will throw up a message and freeze 
>>>again.
>>>
>>>Whenever I disable apic AND lapic, the system is able to bootup AND 
>>>work, however after same 5-10 minutes it start spitting messages, 
>>>which are somewhat different thou and don't hang the system completely 
>>>but render it rather unusable anyway.
>>>
>>>As soon as I disable SMP - everything works like a charm.
>>>
>>
>>For what it's worth I too have seen this same problem. It happens when I 
>>use the stock Fedora kernels but not my custom compiled kernel. I'm not 
>>sure what I compiled differently but at the time I thought that 
>>something in the new kernel fixed it.
> 
> 
> I only use kernel.org kernels, so perhaps there's a problem with the Fedora
> kernel.
> 
> 
>>I too am running an Athlon X2 using sata_nv. I have an ASUS motherboard. 
>>But what I noticed was that the problem went away if I used 2 gigs of 
>>ram instead of 4 gigs. When you use the whole 4 gigs there is some 
>>memory mapping going on and I thought perhaps the problem was related to 
>>the sata_nv not liking the memory mapped over the 4gig barrier.
> 
> 
> That's possible.  Unfortunately I cannot verify this, since there are 2GB of
> RAM in my box.
> 
> I remeber someone having a problem with sata_nv DMAing over 2GB of RAM,
> so there may be something wrong with it.

That can very much be it, my box has 3G RAM.. I'll try checking that 
this Saturday (tomorrow hence), though I already ordered an RMA for the 
board :) Anyway, I can't live with 2G only, so that's not an option for 
me. Ordered one from nForce3, it's reported to be stable in the similar 
environment. Wonder if that's only nForce4 issue...

Cheers,
Vladimir

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