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Date:      Wed, 19 Jul 1995 22:02:40 +0200 (MET DST)
From:      hm@ernie.altona.hamburg.com (Hellmuth Michaelis)
To:        terry@cs.weber.edu (Terry Lambert)
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD Hackers)
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD 2.0.5 system hangs
Message-ID:  <m0sYfKL-00001FC@ernie.altona.hamburg.com>
In-Reply-To: <9507191818.AA28521@cs.weber.edu> from "Terry Lambert" at Jul 19, 95 12:18:42 pm

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>From the keyboard of Terry Lambert:

First of all, Terry, i highly appreciate the detailed feedback from you !!!

> > I experience 2 types of total system hangs under 2.0.5-Release,
> > 
> > 1) in an xterm, while scrolling, the system sometimes and totally
> >    unreproducable just hangs. This seems to occur more often the smaller
> >    the used font and/or the larger the xterm is, or better the more
> >    amount to scroll.
> >    This also happened from time to time under 1.1.5.1 and was one of the
> >    reasons i wanted to upgrade.
> >    When this happens, the machine is totally frozen so there is not even
> >    a chance to look from another side into the machine.
> 
> Move sio3 off of irq 7.
> 
> IRQ 7 is the garbage interrupt for untrapped interrupts.

I wasn't aware of this !

The mouse is connected to sio3.

> Nevertheless, since you have nothing on irq 2, potentially, the video
> card is generating IRQ 2 on vertical retrace (a typical result of
> card level scroll commands, since they wait for vertical retrace).

No, it's disabled by a jumper or a switch - at least by hardware! The board
is an ELSA Winner 1000.

> > 2) Disk i/o hangs, sometimes with the access LED on the controller on, some-
> >    times off. The machine is operational as long as one does not "touch"
> >    the disks, so i would be able to search for something if someone would
> >    tell me where to search and what to search for.

> I'm a little upset that there is not a controller identification message
> from the SCSI controller;

Sorry, yes, i have 2 1740's with identical firmware in this machine.

> The important issue here is, I think, firmware revision and EISA
> configuration utility settings.

They both have the same firmware identified as "BIOS V1.40" during boot, that
is the latest i could find at that time.

> In particular, Adaptec shipped all of it's 174x boards with a "3.0"
> EISA config disk, and they have a "3.1" EISA config disk that has
> better settings available in it.

I'm not shure wich version i have, but i'll get me 3.1.

> I would not suggest changing translation modes

I checked translation off and on, make no difference.

> I would, however, suggest looking at bus timing and disconnect,
> especially with regard to the Archive Viper drive.  Setting the
> bus transfer rate down on the offending peripheral(s) will probably
> fix your problem.

Yes, i once had and "old" SCSI I drive on the disk SCSI bus and it made
problems until i reconfigured for a max data xfer rate of 5Mb/s.

All devices on the 2nd bus are already set to 5Mb/s mostly because of
the Archive (where did you knew this from ??? :-), bad experience ?)

And yes, after another hang today in the morning i have also set the
max xfer rate on the 1st bus down to 5Mb/s for all devices ....

> If you disable disconnect, make sure that the kernel you are
> running has tagged command queueuing turned off, since it relies
> on disconnect and doesn't compute transitive closure across the
> call graph to ensure against deadlock.

Thanks for the hint!

> BTW, UnixWare defaults the transfer rate to the second lowest for
> all Adaptec controllers to guard against just this type of problem.

Strange. I always thought the 1740's were a good deal, not only because
of the documentation!

> PS: Check your SCSI II cables and Active termination (had to say it
> before Rod jumped in 8-)).

A year or so ago i had some strange problems with this controllers, which
automagically disappeared when i exchanged all the PC crap with "real"
SCSI II cables. Also, i do regularly check the internal cables, connectors
and terminators, although i must admit, that i have an active terminator
only at one end of each bus.

hellmuth
-- 
Hellmuth Michaelis           hm@altona.hamburg.com              Hamburg, Europe
                                              (A)bort, (R)etry, (I)nstall BSD ?



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