From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jul 17 17:04:49 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5229037B404 for ; Thu, 17 Jul 2003 17:04:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from wrongcrowd.com (dsl231-036-178.sea1.dsl.speakeasy.net [216.231.36.178]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1BA0A43FB1 for ; Thu, 17 Jul 2003 17:04:48 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from matt@wrongcrowd.com) Received: from [192.168.1.99] (helo=thunderbird.wrongcrowd.com) by wrongcrowd.com with esmtp (Exim 3.34 #1) id 19dIjq-0006TN-00 for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Thu, 17 Jul 2003 17:04:42 -0700 Message-Id: <5.2.0.9.2.20030717161329.0359c490@mail.speakeasy.net> X-Sender: matt@192.168.1.1 X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.2.0.9 Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 17:05:29 -0700 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org From: Matt Staroscik Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Subject: Adaptec 2400A update X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 00:04:49 -0000 To summarize previous posts: my Adaptec 2400A RAID card, with 2 Maxtor 160GB drives (model 6Y160P0) in a RAID-1, corrupts data and produces kernel panics under heavy activity. This is under 4.8 (plain vanilla install), ECS L7VTA motherboard (KT400), 512MB RAM, one vr NIC (on motherboard), 1 dc NIC (PCI), 1 Matrox Millennium II PCI video card. The 2400A is supported by the asr driver that is built into the GENERIC kernel. After a lot of testing I have discovered some interesting things but I am not any closer to a solution. - I put an old spare drive on the motherboard's IDE bus, did a basic install and thrashed the heck out of it to rule out problems with CPU, RAM, and other non-RAID components. This worked great. The system will be nice and fast when I get it stable! :) - I then put the same spare on the RAID card -- not as part of any array, but as "just a disk." I reinstalled 4.8 and thrashed it good -- cvsupping new source, buildworld, etc. No problems. (The RAID array was not in the system at all.) - Then I separately tested each of the Maxtor 160s as "just a disk" on the 2400A, first clobbering the RAID data. Each disk got a fresh 4.8 install and the same build/install world/kernel routine, plus some other big file operations that caused problems for the array -- like deleting /usr/obj/*. No problems! - I have also done every imaginable type of cable swap and wiggle. I am as sure as I can be that there are no gross hardware faults in this system. I am currently re-running Maxtor's utilities on the 160's but I don't expect to find any problems. Assuming the disks check out as good again I will have ruled out everything except some kind of bug or subtle hardware defect that ONLY effects RAID-1 -- and perhaps only with my hardware combination, as I know many others use this card with great success. Oh, I haven't tested RAID-0. I don't intend to use it, but I will make a striped array and see how it goes just for fun. I will also try a Linux or Windows install too, to try and determine if this is a FreeBSD-specific problem. Hmm, guess I don't have any questions for the list, but hopefully this post will show future Googlers with misbehaving 2400A's that they are not crazy. Cheers, Matt