FC4 x86_64 dies with heavy SATA RAID load

Peter Arremann loony at loonybin.org
Thu Jun 30 04:22:16 UTC 2005


On Wednesday 29 June 2005 23:59, Mark Miksis wrote:
> Peter Arremann wrote:
> > Actually, I have some 9500s that are finally getting stable. Each new
> > driver revision and each new firmware is better than the last and by
> > now, I have no issues (also running the x86_64 but on amd hardware).
>
> Thanks for the encouraging feedback.  It appears that the driver in FC4
> is a bit old (and doesn't seem to correspond to a 3Ware release).  Are
> you running SMP?
Both - running an Athlon64, 32bit PCI slot, 2 mirrored drives and a quad 
opteron, pci-x, 4 raid 0 drives. 

> > Anyone who asks me, usually gets a 8500 controller as recommendation
> > because unlike the 9500s, those are actually rock solid. You should
> > try the firmware updates and maybe the driver (if there is one newer
> > than the one in the kernel you're running) and see if you can't get
> > your box stable that way - as I said before, it worked for me.
>
> I plan to compile the latest driver tomorrow...
The driver in the FC4 kernel is 2.26.02.002 (grep -i 
version /lib/modules/2.6.11-1.1369_FC4/kernel/drivers/scsi/3w-9xxx.ko) 
while the driver that amcc has is 2.26.03.015fw (grep TW_DRIVER_VERSION 
3w-9xxx.c) Its not that great a difference but it might be worth it for you. 
Don't forget to check the firmware upgrades as well. 

> > Also, you might want to get an AMD system next time if you have heavy
> > IO and more than 4GB ram - the AMD iommu requires no bounce
> > buffers...
>
> Interesting.  Actually, my IO needs are not *that* heavy, but I first
> encountered the problem when trying to restore a bunch of backups from
> my previous machine.
High is relative... Sometimes a simple script can create a ton of IO for just 
a few seconds and that can be enough. :-) 

Peter.




More information about the fedora-list mailing list