3Ware delayed device mounting errors with newer 9500 series adapters

["Jeffrey V. Merkey" <jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com>]

Adam,

We have been getting 3Ware 9500 series adapters in the past 60 days 
which exhibit a delayed behavior during mounting of FS from
/etc/fstab.   The adapters older than this do not exhibit this behavior. 

During bootup, if the driver is compiled as a module rather than in 
kernel, mount points such as /var in fstab fail to detect the devices
until the system fully boots, at which point the /dev/sdb etc. devices 
showup.  It happens on both ATA cabled drives and drives
cabled with multi-lane controller backplanes.

The problem is easy to reproduce.  Install ES4, point the /var directory 
during install to one of the array devices in disk druid, and after
the install completes, /var/ will not mount during bootup and all sorts 
of errors stream off the screen.  I can reproduce the problem
with several systems in our labs and upon investigating the adapter 
revisions, I find that adapters ordered in the past 60 days exhibit
the problem.   Compiling the driver in kernel gets around the problem, 
indicating its timing related.

Jeff