From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262921AbVAFR0P (ORCPT ); Thu, 6 Jan 2005 12:26:15 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262923AbVAFR0P (ORCPT ); Thu, 6 Jan 2005 12:26:15 -0500 Received: from nika.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu ([137.229.94.16]:58287 "EHLO nika.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262921AbVAFR0F (ORCPT ); Thu, 6 Jan 2005 12:26:05 -0500 Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2005 08:26:11 -0900 From: Christopher Swingley To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Kernel freeze: 2.6.10 SMP, Promise TX4, software RAID Message-ID: <20050106172611.GA22820@iarc.uaf.edu> Mail-Followup-To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline X-gpg-fingerprint: B96C 58DC 0643 F8FE C9D0 8F55 1542 1A4F 0698 252E X-gpg-key: [http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~cswingle/gnupgkey.asc] X-URL: [http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~cswingle/] X-Editor: VIM [http://www.vim.org] X-message-flag: Consider Linux: fast, reliable, secure & free! User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6+20040907i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Greetings! I've recently had the same problem with two different systems while trying to upgrade the RAID drives. Both systems are dual processor Pentium machines (one a Dual Xeon, one a dual PIII), and both have new Promise TX4 cards to support new SATA drives. I'm using the 2.6.10 kernel software RAID-5. I can create the array, but when I try to put a filesystem on it using 'mkfs.ext3', the system inevitably hangs and 'ataXX: command timeout' appears on the console before it's completely locked up (no Ctrl-Alt-SysReq, no caps lock, etc.). The timeouts do not happen on the same ata interface each time, so I don't think it's the controllers or the drives. On one system I finally just replaced the motherboard with a single processor K7 board and the whole thing has been running well for about a week now. On the other system (the Xeon box), 'noapic' passed to the kernel has allowed me to actually put a filesystem on the newly created RAID. I can't remember if I tried 'noapic' on the first system because I was trying so many different things. Now I'm a bit nervous about both systems and I'm wondering what the appropriate solution is (just use 'noapic', get newer motherboards, don't use SMP, etc.)? Is there a patch that's reported to fix this, or are these problems due to insufficient support for SATA controllers on the older motherboards I've tried? I'm happy to provide any details, if it might help. Thanks, Chris -- Christopher S. Swingley email: cswingle@iarc.uaf.edu (work) Intl. Arctic Research Center cswingle@gmail.com (personal) University of Alaska Fairbanks www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~cswingle/