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Date:      Mon, 26 Jun 2000 11:08:29 +0200
From:      Thomas Zenker <thz@Lennartz-electronic.de>
To:        Don Lewis <Don.Lewis@tsc.tdk.com>
Cc:        scsi@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: Invalidating pack messages
Message-ID:  <20000626110829.A563@mezcal.tue.le>
In-Reply-To: <200006220729.AAA07327@salsa.gv.tsc.tdk.com>; from Don.Lewis@tsc.tdk.com on Thu, Jun 22, 2000 at 12:29:59AM -0700
References:  <20000620172810.A84355@albury.net.au> <200006200754.AAA28201@salsa.gv.tsc.tdk.com> <20000621143609.A3012@albury.net.au> <200006220729.AAA07327@salsa.gv.tsc.tdk.com>

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On Thu, Jun 22, 2000 at 12:29:59AM -0700, Don Lewis wrote:
> On Jun 21,  2:36pm, Nick Slager wrote:
> } Subject: Re: Invalidating pack messages
> 
> } I pulled out the power supply this morning, and replaced it with a brand new
> } unit. The system has just crashed again with the 'Invalidating pack' error
> } messages.
> 
> [ snip ]
> 
> } If this is the case (and I'm not doubting what you say), what else could cause
> } this problem?
> 
> If your seeing funny blinking lights on the drive, and you are not the only
> person having problems with this particular drive model, I would be very
> suspicious that a drive firmware bug is being tickled.  The best solution
> in this case would be to obtain a better version of the firmware from the
> vendor, but lacking that you might try turning off tagged command queueing
> or just reducing the number of tagged openings.  I've noticed interactions
> between tagged command queueing and write caching on Seagate drives, so you
> might try turning off write caching and leaving the number of tagged
> openings alone.  You can do all this with camcontrol.
> 
> I'm not a fan of write caching since it violates the assumptions behind
> softupdates, so I turn it off on all my drives.  I haven't seen any
> real performance penalty in doing so, though I think I've heard reports
> that it makes newfs run slower.
> 
> 
> You may be seeing this in FreeBSD and not NT because I think the CAM SCSI
> system can push the drives a lot harder than the SCSI drivers in NT.
> 

I am seeing the same problem here with an aic7892 onboard controller
on a new SuperMicro PMIIIDM3 motherboard and Seagate drive (ST39236LW)
here.

If tagged queueing enabled it falls in timeout with heavy writes
(iozone 10 suffices). I have disabled write caching: no change.
Disabling tagged queuing helps (does a buildworld and izone 6000
flawless), but write performance drops to a third.

I have tried to change the drive with a ST39175LW, which I took
from an other computer with aic7890 onboard and works there very
well: it shows the same problems on the aic7892 as the original
drive.


-- Thomas Zenker
   c/o Lennartz electronic GmbH
   Phone:  +49-(0)7071-93550
   Email:  thz@lennartz-electronic.de


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