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Date:      Tue, 7 Dec 1999 20:01:51 +0000 (GMT)
From:      Doug Rabson <dfr@nlsystems.com>
To:        Peter Wemm <peter@netplex.com.au>
Cc:        Ed Hall <edhall@screech.weirdnoise.com>, Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com>, "Jonathan M. Bresler" <jmb@hub.freebsd.org>, kris@hub.freebsd.org, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: PCI DMA lockups in 3.2 (3.3 maybe?) 
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.10.9912072001300.54133-100000@salmon.nlsystems.com>
In-Reply-To: <19991207120139.869F01CC6@overcee.netplex.com.au>

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On Tue, 7 Dec 1999, Peter Wemm wrote:

> Ed Hall wrote:
> > : you wrote:
> > : : I wrote:
> > : :4) Using a different SCSI driver (Peter managed to get a driver from 4.0
> > : :   hooked up under 3.3, and it survived two days of torture that would
> > : :   have toasted things within an hour using the stock driver; you'll have
> > : :   to ask him for details).
> > : 
> > :     Ed, this is great stuff!
> > : 
> > :     Are you sure about #4?  Is that the same ncr.c driver or something
> > :     else?  There are only a few differences between the 3.x and 4.x
> > :     /usr/src/sys/pci/ncr.c drivers.  Which Peter, Peter Wemm?
> > 
> > It was Peter Wemm.  I may be misunderstanding just what he did--trying
> > the 4.0 driver was just one several experiments he proposed and
> > performed.  And saying that it "worked" is provisional; two days of
> > testing strongly suggests that it reduced the problem with 3.3 to
> > acceptible levels for my application.  Is it truly a "fix?" I don't
> > know.
> > 
> > 		-Ed
> 
> I might add that others have found that using sym + fxp on the N440BX
> motherboards didn't solve their problems, or moved the problem elsewhere,
> eg: to the sbdrop() etc routines.  One other interesting variable.. an ahc
> + pn driver combination on a 440BX motherboard under -current in late may
> 99 had the exact same problems we saw a number of times with ncr + fxp (ie:
> sbdrop, sbflush, m_copym etc panics).  The same motherboard with ahc + de or
> fxp did not have the problems.
> 
> In all cases the panics were extremely "strange".  The original fxp+ncr
> combination changed it's crash pattern when we put extra debugging in it to
> sanity check and check conditions.  The results varied from registers getting
> clobbered (as though an interrupt happened and the trapframe on the stack got
> changed by the interrupt handler and then returned with garbage contents in
> some registers.. this is what seems to be happening in the fxp_add_rfabuf()
> panics - %esi was getting loaded earlier on and when it got to do the
> vtophys() it was zero.  People have printed the contents of "rfa" on the stack
> and seen garbage - in fact it's a register variable under normal circumstances.
> Adding debugging caused it to be stored in the local variable rather than
> being left in %esi, and then the panics moved elsewhere (!).)
> 
> It had the markings of "something trashing something somewhere and then crashing
> quite a bit later".  :-(

Has anyone tried fiddling with the latency timer on either fxp or ncr (or
both)?

--
Doug Rabson				Mail:  dfr@nlsystems.com
Nonlinear Systems Ltd.			Phone: +44 181 442 9037




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