Symbios phase change messages

[Dave Jones]

On Mon, Apr 18, 2005 at 05:48:38PM -0700, Tom Trebisky wrote:
 > Hello all,
 > 
 > I noticed that yum brought in the 2.6.11-1.14 kernel and I tried booting it last night.
 > It boots OK, but a problem I have experienced for some time is even worse with it,
 > and I have gone back to the prior (2.6.10-1.770) kernel.  The problem is that the
 > console (and ultimately the log) gets filled with the following messages:
 > 
 > Apr 17 21:43:15 cholla kernel: sym0:5:0:phase change 6-7 9 at 35981b84 resid=7.
 > Apr 17 21:43:15 cholla kernel: sym0:5:0:phase change 6-7 9 at 35981b90 resid=7.
 > Apr 17 21:43:15 cholla kernel: sym0:5:0:phase change 6-7 9 at 35981b84 resid=7.
 > Apr 17 21:43:15 cholla kernel: sym0:5:0:phase change 6-7 9 at 35981b90 resid=7.
 > Apr 17 21:43:15 cholla kernel: sym0:5:0:phase change 6-7 9 at 35981b84 resid=7.
 > Apr 17 21:43:15 cholla kernel: sym0:5:0:phase change 6-7 9 at 35981b90 resid=7.
 > Apr 17 21:43:15 cholla kernel: sym0:5:0:phase change 6-7 9 at 35981b84 resid=7.
 > Apr 17 21:43:15 cholla kernel: sym0:5:0:phase change 6-7 9 at 35981b90 resid=7.
 > Apr 17 21:43:15 cholla kernel: sym0:5:0:phase change 6-7 9 at 35981b84 resid=7.
 > Apr 17 21:43:15 cholla kernel: sym0:5:0:phase change 6-7 9 at 35981b90 resid=7.
 > 
 > I have been seeing this for some time now, and thought it was an inadvertent
 > debug message left turned on in the driver, but perhaps this is trying to tell
 > me something (though I am hard pressed to imagine what).  Any suggestions?
 > Maybe my hardware is really flaking out (although I am running fine now,
 > albeit with lots of these messages -- and have been for 2 or 3 years with
 > this drive ..... hmmmm).
 > 
 > I would go ahead and run the new kernel, except there are so many of these
 > messages being spewed out that I cannot manage to get through the dialog
 > to install the Nvidia driver.  I just gave up for the time being.
 > 
 > Any tips, suggestions, or comments?  The fact that it is reporting the
 > same what seem to be block numbers makes me wonder if this hard drive
 > is just getting ill.  But what the heck does a phase change from 6 to 7 mean??

This has been around for a while, and I brought this up with the
upstream maintainer yesterday. He says it's actually getting better
(it doesnt affect as many cards as it used to), but there are
still some bits that need working out.

Reports to linux-scsi at vger.kernel.org would probably get results quicker
than posting to fedora-list.

Thanks,

		Dave