Date: Fri, 28 Nov 1997 10:52:33 +0000 From: Damian Hamill <damian@cablenet.net> To: Bill Vermillion <bill@bilver.oau.org> Cc: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Adaptec 2940 and FreeBSD 2.2.2-RELEASE Message-ID: <347EA271.2F1CF0FB@cablenet.net> References: <199711280338.WAA17738@bilver.magicnet.net>
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Bill Vermillion wrote: > > Recently Cliff Addy said: > > > Michael Slater wrote: > > > > > Hello, > > > > I have heard that the Adaptec 2940 driver has had problems in the past. > > > > Is this sorted out in 2.2.2-RELEASE ? > > > We have had ongoing problems with our Adaptec 2940UW servers since the > > 2.1.7 debacle. Our servers were gloriously stable up through 2.1.5, > > unreliable since. 2.2, 2.2.1, and 2.2.2 have shown no improvement, same > > old story that others have mentioned, especially the spontaneous lockups > > with "SCSI bus resets." Haven't tried with 2.2.5, we're probably > > converting to another OS since it looks like it's not going to get fixed. > > Personally, I'm tired of getting up at 2am to power-cycle a server, if I > > enjoyed that we'd be running NT :) > > > > I had so much trouble getting the 2940's to work when I was > installing an SCO system for a client 2 years ago, I have made > every effort to avoid them and only use BusLogic. Your problems may be more to do with things like bus length than choice of controller. I used to specify Buslogic by default but now I go for 3940s. I've got news servers running 2.2.2 that have 3940s fitted and they have been running without any problem, in fact the only problem I have had recently was with the one machine that had a Buslogic controller, so I've just replaced it with another 3940. When we were building the machines we found that we had to get the bus length as short as possible so we had special 0.5m cables made up. For those of you having problems answer these questions; 1) do you have external devices on the bus (with a 1m cable) 2) are you running the bus in Ultra SCSI mode If the answer to both of these is yes then you are looking for trouble. Add the lengths of ALL the bits of cable on any one SCSI bus and if this is > 1.5m then don't run in Ultra SCSI mode. This is why I've just swapped out a Buslogic for the 3940. The machine in question has 2 external devices and the 3940 allows me to split them across the 2 busses, in doing so I can keep the two bus lengths to a minimum and run the busses at high speed. I think the very VERY last thing I would do if I had problems would be to change to another OS. I've tried a few of them and I've come to the conclusion that FreeBSD is the most versatile and stable platform for an ISP. regards damian -- * Damian Hamill M.D. damian@cablenet.net * CableNet & The Landscape Channel * http://www.cablenet.net/ http://www.landscapetv.com/
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