Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:55:14 -0500 From: "Brian A Seklecki (Mobile)" <bseklecki@collaborativefusion.com> To: Simon <simon@optinet.com> Cc: Sean McAfee <smcafee@collaborativefusion.com>, Jason Thomson <jason.thomson@mintel.com>, Benjie Chen <benjie@addgene.org>, "freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org" <freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: PERC5 (LSI MegaSAS) Patrol Read crashes Message-ID: <1195160114.4042.154.camel@new-host> In-Reply-To: <20071114122210.42E8613C4BB@mx1.freebsd.org> References: <20071114122210.42E8613C4BB@mx1.freebsd.org>
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On Wed, 2007-11-14 at 07:23 -0500, Simon wrote: > Do you guys perform consistency checks on your RAID5 > or other redundant arrays? > > -Simon > > > On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 10:09:55 +0000, Jason Thomson wrote: Normally I'd be praising Dell, but I think a little vendor bashing is due here. Its a software bug (driver). It can probably be easily fixed. I think there's a PR on it somewhere (will check). We eliminated firmware bugs through P.O.L. I suspect, but haven't confirmed, that the driver developer used a reference platform w/ the "Patrol Reads" disabled. Maybe that platform was provided by the employer, having already passed through the hands of wise administrators who saw through the marketing _BULLSHIT_ that "Patrol Reads" really are. The linux beast-crew on poweredge-linux@ claims that it doesn't happen on RHEL. But wow would they really be able to differentiate a PERC5-related crash from any other inexplicable Linux kernel panic? Well, there's a lot of them and they like to whine a lot, so I imagine Dell would have done something. The whole thing is a UGLY UGLY hack. Needing Linux 32-bit compat support just to monitor and administer your RAID controller? Might as well just install Redhat and send your root password to misc@openbsd.org. All of that functionality really should be tied into an out-of-band system like the LOM. The problem is that the DRAC5 is crap too, crap customized for Windows users. The PERC5 is OEM crappy closed source hardware, and Dell should know better. The Broadcom NICS (bge(4)) are crap. Let's not forget the HA NIC features that only work in select OSs. The only praise Dell gets is that the IPMI on the integrated IPMI/DRAC5 card is faster. It's all subtle vendor lock-in crap. As if no one remembers the 90s and the fall of UNIX? Dell selectively uses aspects of F/OSS methodology to suit their needs. If you think back, 18 months after the 8th gen was release, FreeBSD was rock-solid on that platform. Intel NICs and PERC4. AMI/LSI even released the source code to the MegArc CLI. Anyway, Dell really screwed up on the 9th gen. ~BAS (Likes to do his vendor bashing _before_ lunch, but sometimes takes a late one)
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