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Date:      Sun, 31 Mar 2013 15:02:09 -0600
From:      Scott Long <scottl@samsco.org>
To:        Victor Balada Diaz <victor@bsdes.net>, Alexander Motin <mav@freebsd.org>
Cc:        "freebsd-current@freebsd.org FreeBSD" <freebsd-current@freebsd.org>, "freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Stable" <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Any objections/comments on axing out old ATA stack?
Message-ID:  <C699FE76-B456-49C7-8D3A-DD54F98DAFC1@samsco.org>
In-Reply-To: <20130331130409.GO3178@equilibrium.bsdes.net>
References:  <51536306.5030907@FreeBSD.org> <20130331130409.GO3178@equilibrium.bsdes.net>

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On Mar 31, 2013, at 7:04 AM, Victor Balada Diaz <victor@bsdes.net> =
wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 11:22:14PM +0200, Alexander Motin wrote:
>> Hi.
>>=20
>> Since FreeBSD 9.0 we are successfully running on the new CAM-based =
ATA=20
>> stack, using only some controller drivers of old ata(4) by having=20
>> `options ATA_CAM` enabled in all kernels by default. I have a wish to=20=

>> drop non-ATA_CAM ata(4) code, unused since that time from the head=20
>> branch to allow further ATA code cleanup.
>>=20
>> Does any one here still uses legacy ATA stack (kernel explicitly =
built=20
>> without `options ATA_CAM`) for some reason, for example as workaround=20=

>> for some regression? Does anybody have good ideas why we should not =
drop=20
>> it now?
>=20
> Hello,
>=20
> At my previous job we had troubles with NCQ on some controllers. It =
caused
> failures and silent data corruption. As old ata code didn't use NCQ we =
just used
> it.
>=20
> I reported some of the problems on 8.2[1] but the problem existed with =
8.3.
>=20
> I no longer have access to those systems, so i don't know if the =
problem
> still exists or have been fixed on newer versions.
>=20
> Regards.
> Victor.


So what I hear you and Matthias saying, I believe, is that it should be =
easier to
force disks to fall back to non-NCQ mode, and/or have a more responsive
black-list for problematic controllers.  Would this help the situation?  =
It's hard to
justify holding back overall forward progress because of some bad =
controllers;
we do several Tbps off of AHCI controllers with NCQ enabled on FreeBSD =
9.x,
enough to make up a sizable percentage of the internet's traffic, and we =
see no
problems.  How can we move forward but also take care of you guys with
problematic hardware?

Scott




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