Vladimir Lazarenko wrote:
>>>>>> My hardware is SMP Supermicro with 6 disks on
>>>>>> Marvell MV88SX6081 8-port SATA II PCI-X Controller (rev 03)
>>>>>> and the sata_mv.c is version 0.25 dated 22 Oct 2005
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The thing works with "old" mvsata340 driver, but the "new" kernel
>>>>>> with
>>>>>> your driver freezes when it starts to probe disks.  Even Magic SysRq
>>>>>> does not work.  The last lines I see on screen are like this:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> sata_mv version 0.25
>>>>>> ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:03.0[A] -> GSI 56 (level, low) -> IRQ 185
>>>>>> sata_mv(0000:02:03.0) 32 slots 8 ports unknown mode IRQ via MSI
>>>>>> ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x0 ctl 0xF8C22120 bmdma 0x0 irq 185
>>>>>> ata2: .... <same things>            0xF8C24120 ...
>>>>>> ...
>>>>>> ata8: .... <same thing>             0xF8C38120 ...
>>>>>> ATA: abnormal status 0x80 on port 0xF8C2211C
>>>>>> ... <five more lines identical to the above>
>>>>>> ata1: dev 0 ATA-7, max UDMA/133, 781422768 sectors: LBA48
>>>>>>
>>>>>> - and at this point it freezes hard.
>>>>>> Any suggestions for me?  Any information I can collect to help
>>>>>> troubleshooting?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> [...]
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> In the meantime, try turning off SMP and seeing if that makes a
>>>>> difference.  There still might be a problem with the spinlocks and
>>>>> if so
>>>>> it should go away in uniprocessor mode.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 'nosmp' makes no difference.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Booting with nosmp isn't enough, you need to compile the kernel with
>>> CONFIG_SMP turned off. Otherwise the spinlocks will still be used and
>>> could cause a hard hang.
>>
>>
>>
>> Yeah, that was it!  It boots with the kernel compiled for UP.
>> (did not yet have a chance to check how it works).
>> Any chance that somebody competent would fix the driver for SMP?
> 
> 
> Umm, that sounds freakingly familiar to what I just had with sata_nv...
> Try "noapic" in smp mode, will that help?

Yesterday, I tried it and it did not help.

> And just in case, did you try 2.6.14-rc5? That was the kernel that fixed
> my similar problem "out-of-the-box".

I pulled up todays's git version (yesterdays's claimed to be 'rc5' as
well), and all of a sudden it booted in SMP mode, without any magic from
my side.  So, the freeze problem is apparently fixed now.

Now I ran into next problem.  I have the controller with 8 channels, and
first 6 of them have disks connected.  Disks are identical, and
mvsata340 driver recognizes them all.  But sata_mv attaches first two
disks, then fails to recognize the next two, then successfully attaches
the last two.  So I end up with 4 disks online, out of 6.  I am
attaching relevant excerpts from dmesg, and similar portion from syslog
of 2.6.11.12 kernel with mvsata340 driver.  (The latter does attach all
six disks).

Any suggestions?
Eugene