Re: Lockup problems on FreeBSD disks

[Roland Smith]

On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 06:39:15PM -0500, David Jackson wrote:
 I have a USB hard drive.  Whenever I open two programs which utilise the 
 USB hard drive simultaneously, these programs, i assume when they 
 attempt to write to the hard drive lock up due to what i suspect must be 
snip

This particular problem is one I haven't seen. But I've had problems with USB
harddisks freezing when trying to write large files. It seems that not
USB-ATA chipsets are created equal, and the 7.x USB stack seems to have
problems with that. 

 It seems most likely that this is a USB level problem involving the USB 
 drivers. I am using FreeBSD 7.1. It is annoying behaviour to say the 
 least and I wonder what can be done about it,

Try 8.0-PRERELEASE. The USB stack has been rewritten for 8.x, and my limited
testing so far indicates it to work better with quirky hardware. The problem
of a panic when unplugging a mounted USB drive should also be fixed.

And even if you still have problems with the 8.x USB stack, I suspect the USB
stack in 8.x is more likely to receive TLC than the one in 7.x, so it would be
best to check that out.

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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Lockup problems on FreeBSD disks

[David Jackson]

I have a USB hard drive.  Whenever I open two programs which utilise the 
USB hard drive simultaneously, these programs, i assume when they 
attempt to write to the hard drive lock up due to what i suspect must be 
some issue with the USB driver and perhaps a deadlock involving multiple 
concurrent accesses to the drive. When they attempt to access the drive 
the programs can lock up for several minutes before being unblocked. 
When only one program is using the drive this behaviour does not seem to 
occur.


It seems most likely that this is a USB level problem involving the USB 
drivers. I am using FreeBSD 7.1. It is annoying behaviour to say the 
least and I wonder what can be done about it, and if this issue is being 
addressed, perhaps in the recent redesign of the USB code. It seems to 
be a pretty consistent issue, happening with multiple installs of 
FreeBSD and different drives.


Thank you.
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