Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 14:40:41 -0800 From: Micah Anderson <micah@indymedia.org> To: Mike Smith <msmith@freebsd.org> Cc: noah <noah@indymedia.org>, freebsd-scsi@freebsd.org, micah@indymedia.org, mark.salyzyn@adaptec.com Subject: Re: update Message-ID: <20001217144041.R11687@riseup.net> In-Reply-To: <200012170038.eBH0caQ02010@mass.osd.bsdi.com>; from msmith@freebsd.org on Sat, Dec 16, 2000 at 04:38:36PM -0800 References: <20001216071351.A27119@indymedia.org> <200012170038.eBH0caQ02010@mass.osd.bsdi.com>
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On Sat, 16 Dec 2000, Mike Smith wrote: > (please wrap your paragraphs so that it's possible to reply to your > messages in a sane fashion, thanks 8) > > > At "asr0: major=154" the raid card begins a high pitched beep indicating > > that two of the drives have failed and that a rebuild of the raid is > > required, but we've tested all of the drives and replaced the raid card > > with a new one, and still get the same problem. The reason I'm asking > > about possible software issues is that other OS's have worked on this raid > > setup. > > I've copied Mark at Adaptec, who is the author and principle maintainer > of the 'asr' driver, since he's going to have the best idea of what's > actually going on here. Without saying which OS' you've used, it's tough > to know whether they simply aren't enabling the card alarm though. We have gone through exhaustive troubleshooting lengths to try to determine what the problem is. I have swapped RAID cards, swapped cables, tried a different motherboard, different powersupply in every possible combination of configuration. Each time I have to start from the beginning, destroying the RAID configuration and then creating a new one, which takes over an hour, so this process has taken literally three weeks to try all the potential configurations. The RAID alarm goes off on the card during the FreeBSD boot process, the OS continues to boot, but the alarm continues. Rebooting and going into the Adaptec setup tells us that a drive has failed, it is not the same drive every time. During bootup after the RAID POST when the SMOR utility is loading it will usually show the RAID-5 drive as well as the single drive. It is almost as if one of the drives of the RAID is pushed out of the RAID. Individually, each drive works fine. If I install FreeBSD on a single drive, without a RAID constructed things act as normal. These are IBM 10k RPM LVD drives and I ran IBM's drive test utility on each one of them and it came back with no errors. I have been able to install Debian Linux and use the card/drives without this problem. I have called Adaptec to ask them about this and was told to try changing the drive speed from Ultra 3 to Ultra as well as change the delay from the default to 30 seconds, all of these do not change the behavior whatsoever. I have spoken with one other person who had a similar type of problem, except what was happening to him was he was loading some DOS drivers, one of which would wipe the RAID card configuration when it was loaded (ASAPI? I can't recall right now)... I am wondering if there are some other drivers that are being probed in the generic FreeBSD kernel that are doing a similar thing to the config. > > Have you tried running the Adaptec management software to check the > status of the card? In FreeBSD? If there is such a thing it would be interesting to know where one could get it. The CD that was included with the card has no FreeBSD anything on it - the website has no FreeBSD information or downloads on it (except for the breif mention that it is supported, but if you call for support you can't get it). Or are you talking about the SMOR utility that you can access from the BIOS? Thanks for any help that you can offer. Micah > > > Thanks. > > > > On 12/15, Mike Smith wrote: > > > > > > > Hi, I'm working on trying to install FreeBSD 4.2 on a dual p3 700 with > > > > an Adaptec 3200S raid card. From what I can tell everyone that has tried > > > > this card has had good luck. When we install FreeBSD (booting off cd) it > > > > recognizes the card and installs on it perfectly, but when it loads the OS > > > > off the raid it does something to damage the hardware raid, requiring us > > > > to rebuild the RAID in the 3200S' bios. We're pretty sure that this isn't > > > > a hardware problem. > > > > > > You haven't actually included anything that suggests that there's a > > > problem occurring, so it's somewhat difficult to guess what's going on. > > > > > > However, I don't lend much credibility to the suggestion that "FreeBSD > > > does something to damage the hadware raid" - things just don't happen > > > like that. > > > > > > I would be inclined to suspect that you probably have a suspect disk, or > > > cabling/enclosure problems, but without more details it's hard to be sure. > > > > > > > > > -- > > > ... every activity meets with opposition, everyone who acts has his > > > rivals and unfortunately opponents also. But not because people want > > > to be opponents, rather because the tasks and relationships force > > > people to take different points of view. [Dr. Fritz Todt] > > > V I C T O R Y N O T V E N G E A N C E > > > > > > > > > > -- > > noah .. email for pgp/gpg key > > > > -- > ... every activity meets with opposition, everyone who acts has his > rivals and unfortunately opponents also. But not because people want > to be opponents, rather because the tasks and relationships force > people to take different points of view. [Dr. Fritz Todt] > V I C T O R Y N O T V E N G E A N C E > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-scsi" in the body of the message
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