From owner-freebsd-scsi Tue Feb 8 11:14:55 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-scsi@freebsd.org Received: from fwse.teligent.se (gateway.teligent.se [194.17.198.3]) by builder.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id C083A3E90 for ; Tue, 8 Feb 2000 11:14:43 -0800 (PST) To: "Kenneth D. Merry" Cc: Subject: Re: Problems with Adaptec card and FreeBSD 2.2.2 (fwd) Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 20:15:38 +0100 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2014.211 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2014.211 References: <20000207133426.A23334@teligent.se> <20000208105150.A31083@panzer.kdm.org> From: "Jakob Alvermark" Message-ID: <005101bf719f$b8a4a580$d14ea3c3@teligent.se> Sender: owner-freebsd-scsi@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org ----- Original Message ----- From: Kenneth D. Merry To: Cc: Sent: den 8 februari 2000 18:51 Subject: Re: Problems with Adaptec card and FreeBSD 2.2.2 (fwd) > On Tue, Feb 08, 2000 at 11:10:24 +0100, Jakob Alvermark wrote: > > On Mon, 7 Feb 2000, Kenneth D. Merry wrote: > > > The "timed out in {datain|dataout|command}" phase messages almost always > > > mean there is a cabling or termination problem on the bus. It means a > > > signal got stuck on the bus somewhere. > > > > > > There were certainly bugs in the old SCSI layer that could get triggered > > > under heavy load, but this isn't one of them. > > > > > > These sorts of problems can be intermittent, so it isn't surprising that > > > you see them once a week under high load. > > > > > > The new Adaptec driver and the CAM SCSI layer handles problems like this a > > > little better, but there are still no guarantees when signals are getting > > > stuck on the bus. > > > > > > So check your cabling and termination. > > > > I have checked all the cabling and termination on one of the machines > > (which was sent to me). Everything seems ok, there is only one disk, which > > is terminated, and one cable. The SCSI-card itself was set to automatic > > termination, could that be a problem? > > It would only be a problem if the Adaptec driver isn't dealing with > automatic termination properly in FreeBSD 2.2.2. That is certainly a > possibility. > > > I was able to reproduce the problem by creating a number of processes that > > reads and writes a lot on the disk. After a couple of hours the machine > > froze and showed the above message. > > > > I have now changed the termination on the card to "ON", and running the > > same test. > > You might also want to check and see if the cable is too close to the power > supply. You may also want to just replace the cable with a new one and see > what happens. > > I've got a cable that looks okay, yet it caused sporadic (every few days) > SCSI parity errors. Replacing the cable got rid of the errors. Broken cables seems unlikely, it happens on 4 machines, I don't think all of them could be broken. But the theory about closeness to the power supply is interesting. In the machine i opened, the cable was actually strapped to the power supply. Maybe I should let the cable hang freely? /Jakob To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-scsi" in the body of the message