From owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Nov 7 21:28:22 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 87803106567B for ; Fri, 7 Nov 2008 21:28:22 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from sos@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from deepcore.dk (adsl.deepcore.dk [87.63.29.106]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B3B728FC23 for ; Fri, 7 Nov 2008 21:28:21 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from sos@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from [192.168.0.138] ([192.168.0.138]) by deepcore.dk (8.14.3/8.14.2) with ESMTP id mA7LGPcc050013; Fri, 7 Nov 2008 22:16:25 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from sos@FreeBSD.ORG) Message-Id: <77C223A7-C5FC-45DE-BF1A-3BC7982FA582@FreeBSD.ORG> From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?S=F8ren_Schmidt?= To: Peter Wemm In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed; delsp=yes Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v929.2) Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2008 22:16:25 +0100 References: <20081107071752.GA5842@icarus.home.lan> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.929.2) X-Greylist: Sender IP whitelisted, not delayed by milter-greylist-4.0 (deepcore.dk [217.20.59.72]); Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:16:25 +0100 (CET) Cc: Jeremy Chadwick , freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG, votdev@gmx.de, freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Western Digital hard disks and ATA timeouts X-BeenThere: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: General discussion of FreeBSD hardware List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2008 21:28:22 -0000 On 7Nov, 2008, at 20:12 , Peter Wemm wrote: > On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 11:17 PM, Jeremy Chadwick =20 > wrote: > [..] >> As stated, FreeBSD's ATA command timeout is hard-set to 5 seconds, =20= >> and >> is not adjustable without editing the ATA code yourself and =20 >> increasing >> the value. The FreeNAS folks have made patches available to turn the >> timeout value into a sysctl. >> >> Soren and/or others, please increase this timeout value. Five =20 >> seconds >> has now been deemed too aggressive a default. And please consider >> migrating the timeout value into a sysctl. > > The 5 second timeout has been a problem for quite a while actually. > I've had a number of instances where I've had to increase it to 20 or > 30 seconds when recovering from marginal drives. The longest > "successful" recovery attempt I've seen was 26 seconds, I believe on a > Maxtor drive a few years ago. ("successful" =3D=3D the drive spent = 26 > seconds but eventually successfully read the sector). Even the IBM > death star drives could take much longer than 5 seconds to do a > recovery 5 years ago. 5 seconds has never been a good default. > > I think the timeout should be increased to at least 30 seconds. My > windows box has a timeout that goes for several minutes. > > If there is concern about FreeBSD appearing to hang, I could imagine > that a console warning message could be printed after 5 seconds. But > just say "drive has not yet responded". But give it more time. > > In this day and age we're generally not playing games with udma33 vs > 66, notched cables, poor CRC support etc. SATA seems to have > eliminated all that. Hmm, it might make sense to increase the timeout > on SATA connections to 2 or 3 minutes by default. Actually I do have a patch around that logs the timeout on the console =20= after the normal timeout (5secs), then just goes on to wait for double =20= the timeout and log again etc etc, final timeout was IIRC 60 secs but =20= could be anything. -S=F8ren=