PCIe multipliers, how do they work?
Looking into ways to get additional expansion slots, since board designers cannot count past 7 and often not even that high. :-( There are PCIe riser cards that split a wide slot into 2 or more narrower slots, for example 1 x8 slot becomes 2 x4 slots. These would be very useful, except it appears that they require "bifurcation" support in the mainboard's firmware. Which most boards do not provide. And most boards are not supported by FLOSS firmware, so adding bifurcation support would be rather difficult. There are also PCIe cards which provide multiple slots, typically connected with a usb cable. These tend to convert 1 PCIe_x1 slot into multiple PCIe_x1 slots. I get the impression that these do not require bifurcation support. They seem to be aimed at "miners" for attaching multiple gpu cards. I'm not interested in mining or in attaching multiple gpu cards. I'm interesting in adding additional sata cards, Ethernet cards, and such. Unlike the bifurcation type riser splitter cards, which seem to conserve PCIe lanes, these are more like a sata port multiplier, with the same type of bandwidth limitation. I'm wondering how these things work. The wikipedia PCIe page [1] says: "PCI Express switches can create multiple endpoints out of one endpoint to allow sharing one endpoint with multiple devices." So maybe they use a PCIe switch? Poking around wikipedia and google has thus far uncovered very little info about PCIe switches. Wikipedia is less helpful than usual, and they keep making google less and less useful for no apparent reason. I don't see any other obvious keywords to google for. It isn't obvious how slot id/address is handled. How do commands and data get routed to/from the correct card? Is any firmware or OS support required? Is there some other solution that I haven't stumbled across? I'd really like to split an x8 slot into 4 x2 slots, which doesn't seem to be an off-the-shelf option either way. [1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express ___ freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org mailing list https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-hardware-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
Re: ECC support
Andriy: >> Assuming that a board does have the necessary connections but >> the firmware does not have ECC support, is there some reason that >> ECC support could not be added to the OS instead of the firmware? > > Yes, there is. The memory controller is programmed by the code that > runs from ROM and uses no RAM (or the CPU cache is used as the RAM). > Once the real RAM gets used it's too late to reprogram the DRAM controller. Perhaps one of the several bootloader stages could get itelf into CPU cache, program the memory controller, then load and execute the next stage or the OS? Jim: > Replacing the data in memory would require processing overhead > that could accumulate and significantly diminish system performance. If it only replaces data when there is a correctable error, and the errors are occasional soft errors, the effect on performance should be minimal. If there is a hard error, you would want to replace the defective memory before you get an additional error and it becomes uncorrectable. > If the error occurred because of random events and isn't a defect in > the memory, the memory address will be cleaned of the error when the > data is overwritten with other data. If and when new data gets written to that location. If that location contains info that never changes, such as kernel text, the bad bit will never get fixed. > memory, without the extra complexity of the controller, is 12.5% more > expensive. This <80><99>t a huge impact at 8GB, (<80><99>ll need > another 1GB of RAM), but at 1024GB <80><99>ll need another 128GB, > and that much ram still costs enough that your wallet <80><99>t be happy. It is 12.5% in both cases. How much does it cost to have undetected errors in your data? How much does it cost when an Interstate bridge collapses? How much does it cost when one of NASA's missions fails? How much does it cost when your pharmacy receives a prescription with an error in the dose? > the MRC setup on Intel and AMD is both complex and proprietary One wonders why the secrecy. AMD has been much more open than many (most?) chipmakers. They even forced the ATI people to document how to program their chips. I don't see a lot of companies popping up making competing chips. #include standard joke: "How do you make a small fortune in chipmaking? Start with a very large fortune." I can't see what secret would be revealed by saying "set bit 7 of register 4 to 1 to enable ECC". > Intel Red Book So the secret books are red this week, yawn. I remember the nightmare of the merced orange books and the brain damaged "features" the chips had. Not recommended. I'm interested in chips that work correctly, hence the interest in ECC and AMD. Looked for ARM boards with ECC but didn't find any. Is the Sparc stuff any more reliable than it used to be? Other arch choices? > The MRC setup code is a binary blob for otherwise open source boot > firmware such as Coreboot. So the libreboot people are forced to work on reverse engineering these blobs? :-( Don: > I don't think the current APU parts support ECC. According to wikipedia, socket FM2+ does not support ECC. :-( Kabini has support for ECC. And Berlin, (and I assume Toronto) but word is that Berlin and Toronto are basically dead. :-( I think Carrizo and Turion are supposed to support ECC? There really ought to be a list of which CPUs/APUs/sockets/boards do or do not support ECC. > My experience is that many ASUS motherboard support ECC RAM and > usually document that fact. Also many Gigabyte mother boards also > support ECC RAM, but don't document it. >From what I've been reading, both Asus and Gigabyte make good boards. I've seen reviews that complained about Gigabyte's firmware. http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mainboards/display/gigabyte-ga-990fxa-ud5_8.html I've also seen claims that the firmware bricked boards. Reviewers like Asus' firmware. I've seen complaints about Asus's support, and their website has significant problems. The firmware on my Tyan board is crap, and they refused to tell me how much power it needs. Which means I don't know how much other stuff I can run from the same P/S. It should have *way* more power than needed, but experience says "not enough", so I added a 2nd p/s for the disk farm and suddenly had fewer problems. The 2 p/s setup does allow powercycling the mainboard (because of the crappy firmware) without powercycling the disks. Given my experience with the Tyan board, and the apparent lack of FLOSS firmware for recent boards, I'm not real excited about the Gigabyte boards. Asus has a couple of AMD3+ boards that I could probably live with, if their website actually had things like lists of exactly which CPUs and memory are approved, and firmware updates, ... But there are also applications could use a lower wattage solution. Anyone have opinions on other mainboard companies? ECS? Asrock? MSI? Zotac? Others? Don: > +MCA: Bank 4, Status 0x944a400096080a13 > +MCA: Global Cap
ECC support
Many of AMD's CPU/APU parts support ECC memory. Not just the top of the line parts, but also many of the less expensive, less power hungry parts. However, many (most?) of the boards for these chips do not support ECC, or at least do not admit to it. They specify "non-ECC memory". Obviously there have to be connections between the memory controller and the memory for the extra bits. Aside from a little extra time for the board designer to add a few traces to the wire list, this would not raise the cost of the board. Despite this I have read that some boards lack the necessary traces. Does the firmware have to do anything to support ECC? Program a few registers in the memory controller perhaps? A few boards have FLOSS firmware available, so this code could be added, but most boards do not have firmware sources available. Assuming that a board does have the necessary connections but the firmware does not have ECC support, is there some reason that ECC support could not be added to the OS instead of the firmware? I grepped through FreeBSD 8.2 and 10.1 sources but couldn't find anything that looked relevant. Also did not find any code that reported ECC errors, other than one device. Perhaps I missed it? I've been running machines with ECC for 15-20 years and have never seen a report of an ECC error from either NetBSD or FreeBSD. I have seen reports of ECC errors from Digital Unix. And remember getting panics due to parity errors on machines before ECC. So I'm thinking that the BSDs must ignore hardware reports of single bit ECC errors. :-( ___ freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org mailing list https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-hardware-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
PCIe to USB to PCIe
A very small PCIe x1 card with USB 3.0 controller, a USB cable, and a small pcb with a PCIe x16 slot. Intended to allow using x16 video cards with x1 slots, and reducing power/space/cooling demands on mainboard. Claim: "No Driver necessary" Can these things possibly work? If they do, it seems to me that this would be a great way to add additional general purpose PCIe slots to any computer that has USB ports, which nearly all do these days. If no driver is needed, they should work with any OS. Obviously there is a speed limitation, but many applications can live with that. Sounds too good to be true. Am I missing something? http://kaishijia.en.alibaba.com/product/1869213364-221855851/PCIE_PCI_E_Riser_Card_to_USB3_0_and_SATA_Power_Cable_with_PCB_Board_for_Bitcoin_Machine.html More here: http://kaishijia.en.alibaba.com/productgrouplist-221855851/Bitcoin_Mining_cables.html ___ freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org mailing list https://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-hardware-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
Re: Zoned Commands ZBC/ZAC, Shingled SMR drives, ZFS
You can also find these drives inside the STDT8000100 external USB unit for a bit more at $300. It may or may not be the same. There are stories that it is difficult or impossible to talk directly to the drives in recent USB units without the usb-to-sata bridge. I have yet to find a usb-to-sata bridge that doesn't have problems. Is the price predicted to go down further in the future? Disk prices were going down nicely until the great flood. Prices took over a year to return to pre-flood levels, and have been dropping *very* slowly since. The MA activity reduced competition, which doesn't help. Governments can't be bothered to prohibit anticompetitive MA activity. Increases in capacity per drive have slowed, perhaps due to the same reduction in competition. 3TB drives have been the best value in TB/$ for nearly 4 years. I bought some 3TB drives last month for $84.99 each (with free shipping). At the same TB/$ an 8TB drive should cost $226.64, and a 10TB drive should cost $283.30. The penguins added a new device manipulation library to support ZBC/ZAC. There might be things to learn there (mistakes to avoid?). http://www.zdnet.com/article/hgst-gets-closer-to-shipping-10tb-hdd/ ___ freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hardware-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
sata port multiplier recommendations?
I have a couple of the SII3726 sata port multipliers, and they have been working fairly well, but one of them appears to be dying fast. Looking around, I see that they are finally making PMs that claim to do sata-3 speeds. Do any of these work well with BSD? Any to avoid? Is it safe to assume that they work ok with sata-2 controllers? (until I get a newer faster controller) Needs to support NCQ, hotplug, FIS, ... ___ freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hardware-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
cpu/mainboard recommendations?
Current machine is getting flakier by the day (hour?), I need to get a new one before something vital dies altogether. want list: non-inthell ecc smp (4 is probably about right) lots of sata ports (with NCQ, PM(FIS), hotplug, ...), sata3 if possible 1 or 2 PCI slots would be good, the remainder PCIe (v3 if possible) more than 7 slots would be great console can be rs-232 (multiple rs-232 ports would be good) floss firmware; dual-bios, socketed, or some failsafe gpu can drive 4k display, displayport would be nice usb3 (in case anyone ever makes a decent usb-sata bridge) firewire that actually works with bsd (as opposed to via) gig-ethernet (2 if possible) If AMD's Kaveri had ecc I would have gotten one months ago. Berlin should have most of this, but will AMD ever release it? Berlin was supposed to be out in first half of 2014, where is it? At this point I can't keep waiting for Berlin. So Phenom II? Bulldozer/Piledriver? The ARM stuff is still fairly slow, correct? Anything else worth considering? I'll probably try 2 or 3 of the BSDs, but no penguinix, no microshit, no gaming, no overclocking, no watercooling. Need a reasonably fast cpu (not looking for warp factor 8, warp 2 will be fine), lots of i/o, and very reliable. Don't need an over-the-top gpu. Enough resolution and color depth, fast enough to display video properly. Ability to offload video decoding would be nice. ___ freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hardware-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Inexpensive PCI SATA, anyone?
I'm quite content with all other parts of the box, but controller is VERY slow. Can anyone recommend me inexpensive and reasonably fast PCI SATA with 2-4 ports? According to dmidecode, the box has PCI-E slot, x4 PCI Express, long. Note that PCI and PCI Express are different. JMicron JMB363 chipset: NCQ SATA-300 PATA-133 hotplug port multiplier 2 SATA ports + 1 PATA channel works on FreeBSD, ahci(4) driver, NCQ works, port multiplier works, PATA works needs PCIe-x1 slot Silicon Image 3132 chipset: NCQ SATA-300 hotplug port multiplier 2 SATA ports works on FreeBSD, siis(4) driver, NCQ works, port multiplier works needs PCIe-x1 slot Some cards with a single 363 or 3132 chip claim 4 ports, but mean 2 ports with 4 connectors (2 internal and 2 external). You set jumpers to select which connectors are active. Silicon Image 3124 chipset: 4 ports (4 real ports) There are at least two types of cards with 3124: (1) needs PCI-X slot (wide PCI slot, not to be confused with PCI-Express) or (2) needs PCIe-x1 slot (PCI-Express) A PCIe-x1 card should work fine in a PCI-x4 slot. 363 is a tad faster than 3132. However 363 has problems with some disks that 3132 works fine with. 3124 is said to be faster than 3132. None of these are blindingly fast by 2014 standards. Neither 363 nor 3132 can saturate PCIe-x1 bandwidth. I would hope that 3124 can? There is also a EX-3508 card. 8 ports, PCIe-x1, no raid, sil3132 8 ports would need either 4 3232 chips or a port multiplier. Photo at www.exsys.ch but I can't make out the chip numbers and I don't see 4 chips that are the same size. Sellers appear to all be in Europe, I didn't find any sellers in USA. (I wasn't looking for sellers in Russia.) Anyone know anything about this card? (or similar cards?) The 3132 and 3124 are second generation chips. Note that the first generation Silicon Image chips are very very slow, and as far as I know, FreeBSD still doesn't support them properly. (They work fine on NetBSD. Very slow, but at least they work correctly there.) ___ freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hardware-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Getting documentation. ( Was [...] SATA Port Multiplier)
Willem writes: Marvell is among the hardest to get the stuff from. One wonders how they expect to sell parts? Perhaps this is somethings you could also do for this problem. Find a coorperative PM board manufacturer, and bigback on their support with the promise to support their PM boards in FreeBSD. Motivation for them would have to be that there could be a sales advantage in selling PM boards to FreeBSDers. And given that we advertise that ZFS does not need complex/expensive RAID controllers will increase the usage of more simple devices. IIUC we have software RAID, thus we don't need complex/expensive RAID controllers regardless of fs. Don't the various BSDs mostly use the same drivers? Perhaps we could promise sales for Dragon/Open/Net as well as FreeBSD? Otehr way about it would be to involve the FreeBSD foundation, and get them to do the legal part of the stuff as a umbrella for the developers, and then delegate (again under NDA) work to developers that want to work on Marvell stuff. Sounds promising. ___ freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hardware-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Reset Problem with SATA Port Multiplier
Bob writes: After a few hours of a database-like workload A faster way to trigger the problem would be useful. We're actually more interested in archive type workloads than this database workload and we have not observed the problem with an archive workload. So perhaps something about the timing triggers the bug? Sam writes if you have a script or a way to build a kernel to help debug this I will run it if you post it here... I have the same issue on a 3 port multiplier using -HEAD Can you share the make and model of this 3 port multiplier? If it is happening with more than one model of pm, it is more likely some generic problem, rather than triggering some model-specific quirk/bug. Has anyone seen this problem with an older OS release? (say 7.x or 8.x?) If the problem was introduced recently, we might be able to find it by looking at what changed in the source code. I haven't seen the problem with 8.2 or earlier. Looks like a verbose boot will give a little more info. But I suspect that adding more log(9) statements will be needed. Unless mav has a better idea? ___ freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hardware-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Reset Problem with SATA Port Multiplier
Drives: 45 * Seagate Altos ST3000NC002 Port Multipliers: 9 * SiI3826 SATA Controller: 3 * Marvell 88SX7042 After a few hours of a database-like workload over ZFS (NCQ enable, disk write caches disabled), a disk becomes unresponsive (we think due to a drive firmware problem): I have an 8.2 machine with Sil3132 controllers with Sil3726 pm with variety of drives. I have been getting the Timeout on slot small integer followed by lost device. Sometimes the device reappears. (Although the /dev/ufs/label does *not* reappear. :-( ) I have not seen the other drives on the pm get removed, or had to power cycle to recover. Seagate ST3000DM001 with CC4B firmware seems especially bad. ST3000DM001 with CC24 firmware have been ok. So your theory that the drive firmware has a problem seems promising. Sounds like FreeBSD is doing something bad to the pm, which Linux isn't doing. Perhaps log the commands the OS sends to the controller (over the network to a 2nd machine, or to a local disk not on a pm) and compare BSD to Linux? Perhaps start logging when you get the first timeout, to save hours of commands to wade through. Alternately you could stare at the driver sources until enlightenment occurs. AFAIK FreeBSD has never gotten a proper workaround for the quirk in the 1st generation Sil sata controllers, while they run fine on NetBSD. There might be a bug/quirk in the pm's firmware that FreeBSD triggers but Linus doesn't. ___ freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hardware-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
OGP needs a wiki maintainer
The Open Graphics Project is designing a video card that is completely documented and FLOSS-friendly. We need someone to maintain our wiki. This is a volunteer (unpaid) job, but would look great on your resume/cv, and is a way for someone with software skills to help create open hardware. The server resources are being donated. The wiki has been crashing the server, forcing the owner to close the wiki until we can get a new maintainer. Other talent is also welcome, such as device driver writers, simulator writers, hardware design, etc. OGP mailing list (usually low volume): http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo ___ freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hardware-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Seeking BSD friendly video card
Seeking a video card that is completely documented and is fully supported (with source code) by the BSDs. A gpu-less framebuffer is fine. (No videogaming) PCIe At least 2560x1440 (for 27 displays) (analog can be lower resolution) 2560x1600 (30 displays) would be better 4096x2560 (4K displays) would be even better At least 24 bit color (more is better) Work as console for firmware and OS. Must work with X11. Bonus points for multiple heads (e.g. 2 digital + 1 analog) Bonus points for each type of port supported (dvi, hdmi, displayport, vga, s-video, ...) Bonus points for video decoder that is documented and fully supported by the BSDs. Minor bonus points for a small, energy efficient gpu that is documented and fully supported by the BSDs. Bonus points for not even needing a heatsink. Major minus points for power hungry monsters with jet engine fans and extra power cables, double-wide, ... Binary-only is unacceptable, must have source. (Can be BSDL, GPL, ...) Bonus points for supporting sync-on-green. Decent quality. Full height is ok, doesn't need to be low profile. Are there any other issues I should consider? ___ freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hardware-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: FreeBSD on RaspberryPi
If someone knows how to get the video out to work, I'm very interested! Technically, there is a fully open-source graphics stack. The bad news is that they moved the functionality into the binary-only firmware, which makes fixing bugs a bit more difficult. I haven't hunted down the actual code, much less looked at it, but if all the functionality is in the firmware, there shouldn't be much code that needs to be ported to BSD. The good news: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_itempx=MTIxNDY The bad news: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_itempx=MTIxNDk ___ freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hardware-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: ahcich Timeouts SATA SSD
SSD are connected to on-board SATA port on motherboard Presumably to controllers provided by the Intel Tylersburg 5520 chipset. This system was commissioned in February of 2012 and ran without issue as a ZFS backup system on our network until about 3 weeks ago. The system is dual PSU behind a UPS so I don't think that this is an issue. No changes? e.g. no added hardware to increase power load. Overloading the power supply and/or the wiring (with too many splitters) can result in flaky problems like this. OS will respond to ping requests after the issue and if you have an active SSH session you will remain connected to the system until you attempt to do something like 'ls', 'ps', etc. I am not able to drop into DDB when the issue happens as the system is locked up completely. Could be a failure on my part to understand/engage in how to do this, will try if the issue happens again (should on Wednesday AM unless setting camcontrol apm to off for the disks somehow fixes the issue). If the system is alive enough to respond to ping, I'd expect you should be able to get into DDB? Can you get into DDB when the system is working normally? 2 x Crucial M4 64 Gb SATA SSD for FreeBSD OS (zroot) 2 x Intel 320 MLC 80 Gb SATA SSD for L2ARC and swap I ran the Crucial firmware update ISO and it did not see any firmware updates as necessary on the SSD disks. Does the problem happen with both the Crucial and the Intel SSDs? If software I agree that it would not make sense that this would suddenly pop-up after months of operation with no issues. If something causes the software/firmware to take a different path, new issues can appear. E.g. error handling or even timing. Infrequently used code paths might not have been tested sufficiently. Does the controller have firmware? Part of the BIOS I suppose. Is there a BIOS update available? Have you considered connecting the SSDs to a different controller? the on-board AHCI portion of the BIOS does not always see the disks after the event without a hard system power reset. That's at least one bug somewhere, probably the hardware isn't getting reset properly. Does Supermicro know about this bug? I have 48 Gb of Crucial memory that I will put in this system today to replace the 24 Gb or so of Kingston memory I have in the system. Which in addition to being different memory, should reduce swap activity. Suggestion: move everything to conventional drives. Keep at least one SSD connected to system, but normally unused. Now you can beat on the SSD in a controlled manner to debug the problem. Does reading trigger the problem? Writing? Try dd with different blocksizes, accessing multiple SSDs at once, etc. I have to wonder if there is a timing problem, or missing interrupt, or... * Ditch FreeBSD for Solaris so I can keep ZFS lovin for the intended purpose of this system If it fails with FreeBSD but works with Solaris on the same hardware, then it is almost certainly a problem with the device driver. (Or at least a problem that Solaris has a workaround for.) ___ freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hardware-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: UEFI Secure Boot Specs - And some sanity
grarpamp writes: Plenty of millionaires out there now who are in tune with opensource who could startup, buy the same ARM/ATOM/etc chips, the same support chips, load Android and sell it to the masses. Would you please post a list of these millionaire FLOSS entrepreneurs? Thank you. ___ freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hardware-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: PCI-X SATA (non HW-RAID) controller recommendation
having SMART work is probably a good idea Note that some (most?) of the USB-to-SATA bridges do not provide access to SMART, at least not on FreeBSD. Also can't turn off the write buffer, and no NCQ, and pathetically slow. I have the Silicon Image 3132 which is PCIe-x1 with 2 sata ports. Not as fast as it should be but fast enough for my needs. Works well with FreeBSD siis(4), which provides NCQ. Works well with the 3726 port multiplier. Talks to recent 600MB/s drives at 300MB/s, unlike JMB363 which doesn't like 600MB/s drives, even with the sata rev hint set. 300MB/s should be enough. With vanilla rotating drives even 150 is enough. Speed-wise, NCQ is far more important than 300 or 600. Problem is that recent drives are 600 and don't work with JMB363. Drives used to have a jumper to pretend to only talk 150, for controllers that didn't deal well with 300. But as far as I know there isn't any way to get the 600 drives to pretend to be only 150 or 300. Issue: if a port has a problem (flaky disk or whatever), siis(4) may do a bunch of DELAY(big number) which interferes with other hardware doing real-time data logging, causing data to be lost. Unacceptable. Does not require power cycle though. I don't recall it even needing a reboot. That doesn't sound good, but I guess somebody can tell me the issues of any controller or driver that comes up in this discussion. If you're OK with siis despite this, I should too. It isn't acceptable, but I've had similar/identical problems with ata(4) and ahci(4). For all I know maybe all the disk drivers do it. I think the problem is keeping interrupts off for too long. ___ freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hardware-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: SiI 3132 goes crazy and marks both disks as Reserved after each reboot
I've added SiI 3132-based controller with two SATA disks to system, and almost lost my sanity: gstripe configuration becomes lost after each reboot. After some investigation, I found, that after each reboot last sector of disk contains SiI meta-information instead of GEOM:STRIPE one. I have a couple of SiI 3132 controllers (Masscool XWT-PCIE10) with GPT partitioned disks, and the last sectors still appear to contain the Sec GPT headers after several reboots. How to reset this state? And where SiI controller store information (additional to last sector)? I suspect your card's BIOS code. You could see if your mainboard has an option to not run expansion card BIOS code. You could see if there is a better version of BIOS code available for your card. KLUDGE If all else fails, you could create a backup copy of the last sector and have dd(1) restore it from rc.local or cron @reboot. /KLUDGE ___ freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hardware To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-hardware-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
