From owner-cvs-all Mon Oct 12 12:09:09 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id MAA15425 for cvs-all-outgoing; Mon, 12 Oct 1998 12:09:09 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from dingo.cdrom.com (castles203.castles.com [208.214.165.203]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA15401; Mon, 12 Oct 1998 12:09:02 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mike@dingo.cdrom.com) Received: from dingo.cdrom.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by dingo.cdrom.com (8.9.1/8.8.8) with ESMTP id MAA07536; Mon, 12 Oct 1998 12:13:30 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mike@dingo.cdrom.com) Message-Id: <199810121913.MAA07536@dingo.cdrom.com> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 2/24/98 To: "Kenneth D. Merry" cc: mike@smith.net.au (Mike Smith), cvs-committers@FreeBSD.ORG, cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/sys/cam/scsi scsi_da.c In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 12 Oct 1998 12:57:34 MDT." <199810121857.MAA25903@panzer.plutotech.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1998 12:13:29 -0700 From: Mike Smith Sender: owner-cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk > Mike Smith wrote... > > > > I think what this is telling us is that attempting to use anything other > > than the least common denominator as the default is a Bad Idea. > > > > Don't kid yourselves folks; you're not going to manage to add quirk > > entries for all the drives and firmware revisions that screw up royally > > when you try to do fancy things to them. Better to add quirk entries > > for the drives that get it _right_. > > > > Shipping a release with this sort of dangerous behaviour enabled is > > going to be a support _nightmare_. I realise you folks aren't in the > > support firing line, but for the sake of those that are, not to mention > > the extremely negative publicity this sort of problem will cause, please > > consider turning it off. > > Somehow I'm not surprised that someone responded to that commit with a "sky > is falling" message. I wish people would be a little slower with the > knee-jerk reactions. This isn't a "knee-jerk reaction". I've been watching and weighing the situation, and particularly the symptoms, since they first started to manifest. The "sky is (not) falling"; you probably won't even hear the noise. But a large proportion of people with broken-but-not-quirked drives are going to bitch about their systems not rebooting, or their drives having to be power-cycled, etc. I also asked you to "consider" turning it off. This means "please weight the issues", and implies "please offer a reasonable justification, becase we are going to have to use this justification to placate the plaintiffs". > Cache sync has been turned on in the DA driver for a very long time now > (since the first revision, June 27th, 1997) and there have been very > few problems with it. By far, most drives out there do something > reasonable when they get this command. There were "very few problems" with CAM in general until it reached a slightly wider audience with its incoporation into -current. The audience for the 3.0 release will be at least an order of magnitude larger again. The problems may well be trivial and confined to a tiny corner of the userbase, but there will be people in that corner nonetheless. > I think there are plenty of other things in -current that are much more > likely to cause support nightmares and bad publicity. Indeed. Don't think that you're somehow being singled out for "special treatment" here. -- \\ Sometimes you're ahead, \\ Mike Smith \\ sometimes you're behind. \\ mike@smith.net.au \\ The race is long, and in the \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ end it's only with yourself. \\ msmith@cdrom.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe cvs-all" in the body of the message