[2.4] siimage locks hard on high load

[2.4] siimage locks hard on high load

[Witold Krecicki]

I've got Asus a7n8x deluxe with on-board Silicon Image SATA and 2xBarracuda 
120GB connected to it in software RAID array.
On high disk load (e.g. cp -Rf /usr/src/linux somewhere_else) kernel locks 
hard after about 10 seconds (magic sysrq is not working).
It happens only when DMA is enabled. 
/dev/hda:
 multcount    = 16 (on)
 IO_support   =  1 (32-bit)
 unmaskirq    =  1 (on)
 using_dma    =  1 (on)
 keepsettings =  0 (off)
 readonly     =  0 (off)
 readahead    = 16 (on)
 geometry     = 14593/255/63, sectors = 234441648, start = 0

Also, I'm not really satisfied with speed of this array:
/dev/md1:
 Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  1.77 seconds = 36.16 MB/sec
Any solutions/fixes?
-- 
Witold Kręcicki (adasi) adasi [at] culm.net
GPG key: 7AE20871
http://www.culm.net

Re: [2.4] siimage locks hard on high load

[Justin Cormack]

On Fri, 2003-09-12 at 12:44, Witold Krecicki wrote:
> I've got Asus a7n8x deluxe with on-board Silicon Image SATA and 2xBarracuda 
> 120GB connected to it in software RAID array.
> On high disk load (e.g. cp -Rf /usr/src/linux somewhere_else) kernel locks 
> hard after about 10 seconds (magic sysrq is not working).
> It happens only when DMA is enabled. 
> /dev/hda:
>  multcount    = 16 (on)
>  IO_support   =  1 (32-bit)
>  unmaskirq    =  1 (on)
>  using_dma    =  1 (on)
>  keepsettings =  0 (off)
>  readonly     =  0 (off)
>  readahead    = 16 (on)
>  geometry     = 14593/255/63, sectors = 234441648, start = 0
> 
> Also, I'm not really satisfied with speed of this array:
> /dev/md1:
>  Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  1.77 seconds = 36.16 MB/sec
> Any solutions/fixes?

Cant help you on the lockups (I havent seen this myself), but the
performance is due to the workaround that sets max_kb_per_request to 15
for siimage. On some drives (Western digital, maxtor) this only cuts the
performance by 10-15MB/s or so but on the Seagates it completely trashes
performance (you can easily test this but you may get data
corruption...).

A proper bug fix rather than a workaround would be nice (unless this
isnt possible). Are the docs for this chipset actually available and is
a bug fix possible? (Alan/Andre should know).

Justin

Re: [2.4] siimage locks hard on high load

[Alan Cox]

On Gwe, 2003-09-12 at 12:44, Witold Krecicki wrote:
> I've got Asus a7n8x deluxe with on-board Silicon Image SATA and 2xBarracuda 
> 120GB connected to it in software RAID array.
> On high disk load (e.g. cp -Rf /usr/src/linux somewhere_else) kernel locks 
> hard after about 10 seconds (magic sysrq is not working).
> It happens only when DMA is enabled. 

Make sure you have at least 2.4.22, and if your system is Nvidia chipset
see the notes on www.siimage.com, you may need a bios update