Date: Thu, 21 Sep 2000 01:55:28 +0400 (MSD) From: "Aleksandr A.Babaylov" <babolo@links.ru> To: ee@uncanny.net Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-isp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Frustration with SCSI system Message-ID: <200009202155.BAA28162@aaz.links.ru> In-Reply-To: <200009201958.MAA45703@ns2.uncanny.net> from "Edward Elhauge" at "Sep 20, 0 12:58:27 pm"
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Edward Elhauge writes: > I've been using FreeBSD over the last 6 years (since I switched from > NetBSD) to run a small ISP out of my basement. > > I've had about six disk crashes in as many years and still don't know how > to work reliably with them. > > I have installed UPS boxes on each machine and that seems to have lowered > the incidence of failure, but failures still happen; yesterday during our > heat wave in the San Francisco area (possible brownouts also) I had > another. > > OK, so you have to expect these things; but I never seem to find an easy > way to recover these systems. The only thing that I've seen work has been > to mount the disk on another system, back it up, reformat the drive, copy > things back over and find out what was trashed. THERE MUST BE A BETTER > WAY. > > It seems like SCSI systems can't use the bad144 program. They are supposed > to autorecover on bad sectors, but every system that I've had to recover > seems to be in a state where the bad sectors aren't remapping. I've tried > buying top of the line hardware, and it does work faster, but no more > reliably than the cheap stuff. Once you get in this state it is difficult > to mount the partitions so as to recover what is there. > > I really need some good advice here. Do I need to buy RAID hardware for > each and every server in my network? Is there some way to force the SCSI > system to remap bad drives? > > The error I'm getting is: > MEDIUM ERROR info:1010f asc:14,1 > > My configuration is: > 1) Pentium-S 100 Mz > 2) 128M > 3) Adaptec 2940 Ultra/Ultra SCSI with Bios 1.25 > 4) Seagate ST3437 4GB > 5) FreeBSD 3.4 > > Any advice on how to efficiently bring my server back up or how I can > reengineer my system to avoid this in the future, will be greatly > appreciated. I work since 1991 with computer hardware and know exact that SCSI drives is about ten times less reliability than IDE. Yes, I understand that SCSI was more ... extremal may be. I am wery glad that now mostly no need in SCSI drives at all. Just use good IDE drives, may be second root and regular dumps to, for example DDS-4 strimer. It is cost effective. If time to repare is critical, use spare IDE disk and special working place with direct crossover ethernet to dump server in addition to common ethernet. This helps you to paralelise repare work and do fast restore for low additional cost. Do not forget reblock dumps when write to tape. If your system is old enough - use Promise UDMA/66 controller. About temperature you already read. Some modern IDE drives has low power consumption and fast enough. If you need in big space - use RAID with IDE disks and SCSI external interface. Remember that most PCI are only 130 MB/sec wide. AND REMOVE FreeBSD 3.X AT ALL!!! 4.X is far more stable. It is easy, not expansive and works good. Sorry my English is not so good as I want. -- @BABOLO http://links.ru/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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