ServeRaid 4M with IBM netfinity and kernel 2.4.x

ServeRaid 4M with IBM netfinity and kernel 2.4.x

[Stéphane Borel]

We have a problem here that make the filesystem crash during big files
transfer (>1M). It only happens with kernel 2.4.x ; with 2.2.18, it is
very stable and fast.

I have seen a thread some time ago concerning such problem but is there
a solution against it now ?

I should add that the behaviour of serveraid under 2.4 is somehow
strange : during fsck for instance, it seems to get stuck and won't go
further if we don't strike a key on the keyboard.

-- 
Stef

Re: ServeRaid 4M with IBM netfinity and kernel 2.4.x

[Alan Cox]

> We have a problem here that make the filesystem crash during big files
> transfer (>1M). It only happens with kernel 2.4.x ; with 2.2.18, it is
> very stable and fast.

I don't believe IBM have provided an 'official' 2.4 patch set for the serveraid
yet so there may be bugs lurking.

> I should add that the behaviour of serveraid under 2.4 is somehow
> strange : during fsck for instance, it seems to get stuck and won't go
> further if we don't strike a key on the keyboard.

Yes this has also been seen. At the time you have to do this it appears that
the Linux system is not waiting for the keyboard. It only happens on specific
IBM netfinities too. Perhaps someone at IBM can trace it down a bit further
since I certainly suspect we upset the firmware.

Alan

Re: ServeRaid 4M with IBM netfinity and kernel 2.4.x

[Andrius Adomaitis]

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On Friday 16 February 2001 03:29, Stéphane Borel wrote:

> I should add that the behaviour of serveraid under 2.4 is somehow
> strange : during fsck for instance, it seems to get stuck and won't
> go further if we don't strike a key on the keyboard.

It just a gues, but try disable write back cache. I had similar 
problems with intel crcu31 RAID controller. 

Good luck.
--
Andrius
charta@gaumina.lt

Re: ServeRaid 4M with IBM netfinity and kernel 2.4.x

[Pim Zandbergen]

On Fri, 16 Feb 2001 09:52:18 GMT, in fa.linux.kernel, Alan Cox wrote:

>I don't believe IBM have provided an 'official' 2.4 patch set for the serveraid
>yet so there may be bugs lurking.

They have, but they keep it pretty well hidden. Version 4.50 of the
ServeRAID driver seems to support kernel 2.4 and can be downloaded
from ftp://ftp.pc.ibm.com/pub/pccbbs/pc_servers/24p2809.tgz

There is also driver disk that lets you install Red Hat 7.0 on a
ServeRAID array which can be found at
ftp://ftp.pc.ibm.com/pub/pccbbs/pc_servers/24p2811.exe
This too was hard to find on the IBM web sites, and there is no
mention of it at all on the Red Hat web site.

While you're at it, you might just as well download
ftp://ftp.pc.ibm.com/pub/pccbbs/pc_servers/24p2817.iso and burn it on
a CD. This is a bootable (windows) CD that contains the above files
plus everything else  you need to get your ServeRAID running with
Linux or other operating systems.