I Stratford wrote:
On Nov 12, 2007 4:01 AM, Tejun Heo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Mikael Pettersson wrote:
First, a workaround for a HW erratum affecting 2nd-generation
chips like the SATA300 TX4 was included in kernel 2.6.24-rc2.
...
Alright, if it's fixable, no problem.  I just wanted to remind that
running the link at 3Gbps isn't worth if it continues to cause problems.

I appreciate the replies and ensuing discussion. I will test
2.6.24-rc2 as soon as possible and let you know the results. At that
time I'll also have more runtime on the 1.5Gbps forced 2.622 and will
be able to follow-up. Would you (Tejun, Mikael) prefer that I mail
linux-ide or you directly? I checked for a linux-ide FAQ and didn't
find one.. :)


You should CC linux-ide, so that the rest of us can monitor what's going on.

Mikael :
Secondly, Stratford's system is seriously overloaded:
...
- problems began when two Promise 300 TX4 cards and
  more disks were added
On several occasions we've traced people's problems to
overtaxed system components (cooling, PSU, PCI busses).

Tejun:
Agreed, I've seen my share of those issues.  Especially, SATA links seem
very dependent on power quality and very weird things happen when the
power isn't good enough.  Easy way to debug this is connect half of the
drives to a separate PSU and see what happens.

While I agree that the configuration is "seriously overloaded" (I
believe I described it as "admittedly somewhat insane" ;D) I haven't
experienced any port-resets or timeouts on my new TX4 300s, coming up
on a week of runtime with the 1.5Gbps-only 2.6.22 patched kernel.
Also, the problems did not generally extend to the two pre-existing
TX4 150s on the same PCI bus, even when the TX4 300s were having
problems. If hardware overheating/PCI overload/PSU problems were the
cause, it seems like a very lucky coincidence that stepping the TX4
300s to 1.5Gbps mode also resolves it.  :D

The system's 23 drives are spread across 3 good quality power
supplies. As indicated in my initial mail, I have swapped the PSU on
the new drive with a new one, specifically a 430 watt cooler master
PSU which by my kill-a-watt gives me ~250 watts of headroom even
during spin-up. While my building power is notoriously lousy, I find a
building-power or PSU-power-quality explanation somewhat unlikely,
especially in light of the consistent performance of the two TX4 150s
and the night-and-day performance of 1.5Gbps patched 2.6.22 vice
unpatched 2.6.22 on the two TX4 300s.

Of course, when you're dealing with 23 hard drives in a desktop.. who
knows! Thanks for the replies! :D

___ids
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