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Date:      Fri, 29 May 1998 03:26:56 -0400
From:      tcobb <tcobb@staff.circle.net>
To:        "'Julian Elischer'" <julian@whistle.com>
Cc:        "'Greg Lehey'" <grog@lemis.com>, "'Mike Smith'" <mike@smith.net.au>, "'freebsd-current@freebsd.org'" <freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   RE: DPT driver fails and panics with Degraded Array
Message-ID:  <509A2986E5C5D111B7DD0060082F32A402FACA@freya.circle.net>

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> I guess this is really something you want to discuss with simon.
> I'm sure he will contact you soon
> He's just finished moving houes and has been out-of-touch fro 
> a few weeks
> 
> julian

Yes.

I am going to contact DPT tomorrow about obtaining the NDA-bound specs
for the board.  We have some development talent in-house to commit to
stabilizing this driver.

Our choices are either:
a) wait for Simon to stabilize the driver
b) try to stabilize the driver ourselves, release code back to FreeBSD
c) scrap FreeBSD on this HA server (Solaris,Linux,NT all have native
support for DPT)
d) scrap DPT and use a SCSI-to-SCSI based RAID solution

Given our current committment to DPT and FreeBSD so far, I'd prefer a or
b above.  

I'm not confident of a) happening quickly, as Simon appears to be either
busy with other projects or relatively unavailable.  

As for b) we're mostly application hackers, not driver hackers, so it
may be a stretch.

-Troy Cobb
 Circle Net, Inc.
 http://www.circle.net

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Julian Elischer [mailto:julian@whistle.com]
> Sent: Friday, May 29, 1998 2:33 AM
> To: tcobb
> Cc: 'Greg Lehey'; 'Mike Smith'; 'freebsd-current@freebsd.org'
> Subject: RE: DPT driver fails and panics with Degraded Array
> 
> 
> I guess this is really something you want to discuss with simon.
> I'm sure he will contact you soon
> He's just finished moving houes and has been out-of-touch fro 
> a few weeks
> 
> julian
> 
> 
> On Fri, 29 May 1998, tcobb wrote:
> 
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Greg Lehey [mailto:grog@lemis.com]
> > 
> > > If you just want to report a bug, use send-pr.  That will 
> reach the
> > > person responsible for it as quickly as possible 
> (consider that a lot
> > > of us just drop some of the mailing lists when the combined volume
> > > gets too high).  The purpose of sending the message to -CURRRENT
> > > would be to draw the problem to the attention of other 
> people using
> > > the software.
> > 
> > Indeed. And that was the point of sending to 
> freebsd-current.  I wanted
> > anyone using the DPT driver and expecting it to perform 
> appropriately in
> > critical circumstances to know that it will not do so.  I 
> perhaps should
> > have sent the email to -hackers instead?  Or, maybe -scsi, 
> like I did --
> > it is a scsi driver problem I'm talking about.
> > 
> > I chose HA hardware for the particular reason that the 
> server needs to
> > be *available*.  I settled on FreeBSD for all the servers I 
> manage 2.5
> > years ago because it was the highest quality OS for Intel 
> architectures.
> >  
> > > > "Indicators" are that I shouldn't be using FreeBSD for any High
> > > > Availability or critical operations -- I AM using FreeBSD 
> > > for > 15 live
> > > > servers.
> > > >
> > > > Now, what was your point?
> > > 
> > >
> > > Basically, I'd guess Mike is saying "don't use FreeBSD-CURRENT in
> > > production environments".
> > 
> > I agree.  I wouldn't have done so without provocation.  My 
> counterpoint
> > is that FreeBSD-STABLE is NOT stable, either.  Regardless, due to
> > show-stopper bugs in -stable...
> > 
> > My choices were:  
> > 
> > 1. Discard FreeBSD completely for this server.
> > 2. Switch to a -current snapshot.
> > 
> > I didn't want to do #1, so I spent two weeks rolling a 
> -current snapshot
> > release for my in-house use, I tested it, and tested it.  
> It works well.
> > 
> > My posting was really to point to the fact that it appears 
> that the DPT
> > driver is deficient across ALL releases, not just -current.  
> > 
> > Believe me, I understand the uncharted waters I've entered with my
> > -current snapshot.  The DPT driver failure was the unexpected thing.
> > 
> > 
> > -Troy Cobb
> >  Circle Net, Inc.
> >  http://www.circle.net
> > 
> > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
> > with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
> > 
> 

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