From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Apr 16 21:58:13 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id VAA07671 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 16 Apr 1997 21:58:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gdi.uoregon.edu (gdi.uoregon.edu [128.223.170.30]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id VAA07664 for ; Wed, 16 Apr 1997 21:58:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from localhost (dwhite@localhost) by gdi.uoregon.edu (8.8.5/8.6.12) with SMTP id VAA10705 for ; Wed, 16 Apr 1997 21:58:09 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 21:58:09 -0700 (PDT) From: Doug White X-Sender: dwhite@localhost Reply-To: Doug White To: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Adaptec 2940 drivers -- What is the story? (fwd) Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Someone want to take a crack at this? Doug White | University of Oregon Internet: dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu | Residence Networking Assistant http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite | Computer Science Major ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 21:54:33 -0500 (EST) From: David Moffett To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Adaptec 2940 drivers -- What is the story? Normally I grovel appropriately when writing with a question to questions@freebsd.org as all of you know far more than lowly user scum such as myself about Unix... HOWEVER, what is going on with the 2940 drivers? I have a production machine with a 2940UW running just a Seagate disk running 2.1.5R which has been just wonderful. I would *love* to upgrade this machine to 2.2.1R using the Walnut Creek CD-ROM presently winging it's way to me but there has been too much traffic in the USENET news that there are troubles. So what is the deal? Specifically: 1) Are there known problems with the 2.1.5 ahc driver? 2) Are there known or suspected problems with the 2.2.1 ahc driver? 3) If (2) is true and (1) is false, what would it take to roll back to stability in the form of (1)'s driver? 4) Are there known or suspected problems with the 2.1.7.1 ahc driver? 5) If (4) is true and (1) is false, what would it take to roll back to stability in the form of (1)'s driver? 6) What is the one paragraph description of this history of this problem? This is a case of FreeBSD being a victim of it's own success, more and more we *depend* on the STABLE branch REALLY being stable. I would be up to my #$%^& in trouble if the machine got upgraded and then began to do unpleasant things... (The machine's whole configuration: ASUS P55T2P4 Rev 3.0 Intel Pentium 735\\90 running at the rated 133-MHz 32 meg of party fast-page mode 60ns RAM Adaptec 2940 UW running just 1 Seagate ST32155W (rev 0528) ASUS SC-200 (NCR 53c810) PCI SCSI controller running just 1 NEC CD-ROM 501 (rev 2.2) Generic Trident VGA Video (ISA) (the machine is usually headless) SMC 8216C Ethernet (ISA) Logitech Bus Mouse via mse0 The machine is backed up via ftp (cron, rsh and expect are my friends -- Ok, it's weird, but it works and fits within an otherwise weirder environment) and is mainly used as a compute server doing relatively disk intensive activities (though www.cdrom.com it isn't). Little in the way of installed packages (most normal stuff is installed including X) and just one suite of mean, old, nasty C/FORTRAN/sh programs that keep the uptime at 1.00 pretty much forever. ) So how about figuring out what those of us who seek *critical* 2940U/UW stability should be doing and then post the answer to USENET and I think 'announce' too as this is a topic that has festered just a little too long. Thanks as always for a really cool product! David Moffett (dpm@cs.purdue.edu) P.S. how about a 2.1.7.2 CD-ROM with whatever the real solution is? ftping from the net is often a real pain and recompiling on a machine using a broken disk driver doesn't sound like much fun to me... Thanks!