Linux-Hardware Digest #775, Volume #14 Tue, 15 May 01 13:13:04 EDT
Contents:
Problems with Adaptec 2930CU w/ BRU and SEAGATE Travan in RH6.2 (William N Moore)
Re: Disk errors with kernel 2.4.2 (Vladimir Florinski)
Abit BX133-RAID with two Maxtor 34098H4's plugged into the HPT370 ("Mikko
Kortelainen")
Re: SB Vibra 128 vs Live! value (for infamous crackling problem) (bdr25)
PCI Parallel Card? ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: Hercules Game Theatre XP (David Balazic)
Re: Virtual Framebuffer (David Balazic)
Re: Hercules Game Theatre XP (Kris Kersey)
xmms + a7m = :( (fixed) (Mathew A. Hennessy)
Re: Disk errors with kernel 2.4.2 (Vladimir Florinski)
Sound problem -> warnings about modules ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Problems with Adaptec 2930CU w/ BRU and SEAGATE Travan in RH6.2
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (William N Moore)
Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 15:22:10 GMT
I am having some problems with we believe an Adaptec 2930CU SCSI card
in a DELL Poweredge 2300 Server along with a Seagate Travan tape drive. We
believe the problem deals with the 2930CU SCSI card however are not sure,
so thought we wold post to see if anyone else ran into these problems.
The problem is:
- RH is using the same driver for both a 2930CU and a 7890. We
are guessing that this is because they function off the same
chipset. So this may be no big deal.
- Our tape backups (Done under BRU) will work, then quit
working, and vice versa. For some odd reason. It just states
that it cannot communicate with the tape drive. When we run
tapestat or tapeinfo, it will work then not work. Again, it is
very inconsistant. Once RH quits recognizing the drive, a
reboot seems to get it to pick back up. And the backup will
work for a day or so, then quit. We noticed a thread on a MAC
newsgroup about them having problems with the card in a MAC
environment, however no problems were found under linux with this
card.
- The driver? We have seen some sites advertising a different driver
for this card. If anyone has applied it because they were having
the same problem, please let us know. Or, if anyone has ever run
into this problem. We do not want to have to down the company's
server to install patches unless we have to.
Any information anyone can provide us with would be greatly appreciated in
this matter. As we have run out of ideas in correcting this problem.
Thanks,
Nick Moore
Literati Information Technology
------------------------------
From: Vladimir Florinski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Disk errors with kernel 2.4.2
Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 07:53:56 -0700
Hal Burgiss wrote:
>
> On Mon, 14 May 2001 18:15:52 -0700, Vladimir Florinski
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> >So, I would really appreciate some help from those who are familiar with
> >IDE drivers or had similar experiences. My system is not usable at this
> >point and I need to know whether to replace the disk or the OS.
>
> First, I have 7.1 on an IBM harddrive, and after 2 weeks, I ran e2fsck
> -c on it, just to make sure. This is the kind of thing I worried about
> most with 2.4.x. Zero errors though. But this is not a particularly
> heavy used machine. I have it on another system that gets hit much
> harder, with a Maxtor drive (both DMA BTW), and ran e2fsck on it the
> other day. There were a few what looked to be very minor problems.
>
> Do you have a boot disk with a 2.2 kernel? Or make one. Boot with that,
> maybe single user mode, run e2fsk to make sure the disk is good, then
> run something a loop where you copy/delete some directories. Like /usr.
> Do this for a while, then run e2fsk again, and if there are errors, it's
> the disk. I've been there and this is how I proved it to myself. It was
> a new drive, and I didn't want to believe it ;)
>
Well, I still have my old Seagate disk, so I put it in instead of the ORB.
Booted into RH 6.1 (with a custom kernel 2.2.18). I then wrote a script to copy
the entire new /usr tree 25 times into 5 different directories in the new /home
partition (that's over 30GB total) on the IBM disk. Then I forced e2fsck on both
new /usr and /home partitions and got zero errors, just as I expected. This
proves that the disk is not to blame, but Linux is.
It's sad to realize that Linux is unable to properly handle an IDE hard drive.
This is a kind of task it is supposed to do perfectly, without a single error. I
find it disgusting that the kernel development team chose to release a version
that is as unstable as this.
--
Vladimir
------------------------------
From: "Mikko Kortelainen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Abit BX133-RAID with two Maxtor 34098H4's plugged into the HPT370
Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 18:31:23 +0300
Hi,
I'm having some problems with two Maxtor 34098H4's (40,9 GB) plugged into
the HPT370 of an Abit BX133-RAID board. Problems rise when I try to create a
software RAID-1 partition ("mkraid /dev/mdX") with DMA turned on. The system
totally locks up 5-10 seconds after issuing the command, not responding to
keyboard or pings through network, and giving no more log entries. With "cat
/proc/mdstat" I can see that this lock-up happens in the middle of the
resync process. If I turn DMA off, everything works perfectly (apart from
being somewhat slow...).
If I resync without DMA, and then turn it on, the system may work well for a
long period of time. But copying lots of data to the RAID-1 partition may
still hang the system.
The Maxtors are situated in different ide channels (ide2 and ide3) as
/dev/hde and /dev/hdg.
I've not tried to construct a RAID array with the HPT bios setup. The drives
are configured as normal IDE drives.
The HPT370 bios version is 1.0.3b (the newest to date).
Kernel version is 2.4.4
I've compiled in "HPT366 chipset support", support for RAID 0/1/linear, and
"Generic PCI bus-master DMA support"
Anybody have any suggestions? Have I configured something wrong?
Heres my "hdparm -v /dev/hde" and "hdparm -i /dev/hde" (with DMA off):
========================================================================
/dev/hde:
multcount = 0 (off)
I/O support = 0 (default 16-bit)
unmaskirq = 0 (off)
using_dma = 0 (off)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
nowerr = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 8 (on)
geometry = 13872/16/63, sectors = 80043264, start = 0
/dev/hde:
Model=Maxtor 34098H4, FwRev=YAH814Y0, SerialNo=L40DK5GC
Config={ Fixed }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=57
BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=off
CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=-66060037, LBA=yes, LBAsects=80043264
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5
========================================================================
And here's my partition table (they're identical on each drive):
========================================================================
Disk /dev/hde: 16 heads, 63 sectors, 79408 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hde1 1 66 33232+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde2 67 79408 39988368 5 Extended
/dev/hde5 67 8389 4194760+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde6 8390 12551 2097616+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde7 12552 16713 2097616+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde8 16714 18794 1048792+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde9 18795 20875 1048792+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde10 20876 22956 1048792+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde11 22957 23217 131512+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hde12 23218 79408 28320232+ 83 Linux
========================================================================
And my raidtab:
========================================================================
raiddev /dev/md1
raid-level 1
nr-raid-disks 2
nr-spare-disks 0
persistent-superblock 1
chunk-size 16
device /dev/hde1
raid-disk 0
device /dev/hdg1
raid-disk 1
raiddev /dev/md5
raid-level 1
nr-raid-disks 2
nr-spare-disks 0
persistent-superblock 1
chunk-size 16
device /dev/hde5
raid-disk 0
device /dev/hdg5
raid-disk 1
raiddev /dev/md6
raid-level 1
nr-raid-disks 2
nr-spare-disks 0
persistent-superblock 1
chunk-size 16
device /dev/hde6
raid-disk 0
device /dev/hdg6
raid-disk 1
raiddev /dev/md7
raid-level 1
nr-raid-disks 2
nr-spare-disks 0
persistent-superblock 1
chunk-size 16
device /dev/hde7
raid-disk 0
device /dev/hdg7
raid-disk 1
raiddev /dev/md8
raid-level 0
nr-raid-disks 2
persistent-superblock 1
chunk-size 16
device /dev/hde8
raid-disk 0
device /dev/hdg8
raid-disk 1
raiddev /dev/md9
raid-level 0
nr-raid-disks 2
persistent-superblock 1
chunk-size 16
device /dev/hde9
raid-disk 0
device /dev/hdg9
raid-disk 1
raiddev /dev/md10
raid-level 1
nr-raid-disks 2
nr-spare-disks 0
persistent-superblock 1
chunk-size 16
device /dev/hde10
raid-disk 0
device /dev/hdg10
raid-disk 1
raiddev /dev/md12
raid-level 0
nr-raid-disks 2
persistent-superblock 1
chunk-size 16
device /dev/hde12
raid-disk 0
device /dev/hdg12
raid-disk 1
========================================================================
Help would really be appreciated.
--
/ Mikko Kortelainen
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: bdr25 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: SB Vibra 128 vs Live! value (for infamous crackling problem)
Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 12:52:56 +1200
short answer yep
i have on board essolo-1 sound and it actually works better than my
vibra 128
the vibra 128 is okay for a bottom of the barrel sndcard but youd be
better off saving up for the turtle
- just an opinion
brad
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: PCI Parallel Card?
Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 15:49:18 GMT
I'm trying to learn if PCI parallel cards are supported.
If so, where I can read more about it?
If it's in the Hardware HowTo, I missed it.
------------------------------
From: David Balazic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Hercules Game Theatre XP
Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 17:59:11 +0200
Andrew Luke Nesbit wrote:
>
> In comp.os.linux.hardware you write:
>
> >[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >> I am very seriously considering buying one of these cards because I am completely
>fed up with my SB Live! and the unresolvable crackling problem. (I am choosing this
>one over the SonicFury or Santa Cruz because
> >> of the cool breakout box that it comes with.)
>
> >> Can anybody verify that this card works properly under Linux? Are any of its
>features lacking in support?
>
> >You'll need a bleeding-edge kernel (and I do mean bleeding-edge:
> >2.4.4ac4 or newer) to get intelligable output from it.
>
> >I'm not sure how well anything other than 2-channel waveout/wavein is
> >supported though.. I have one in one of my dual boot boxen right now,
> >but that machine has severe stability (hardware) issues, so I don't use
> >it much.
>
> >As far as Linux support is concerned, the best (modern) card to get is
> >the SBLive. The GTXP should only get better, but it'll be a while
> >before you can take advantage of its fancier features. And Philips
> >hasn't released any specs at all. :)
>
> I currently have an SB Live! and that is the very reason why I am looking
> to buy a new card... it's giving me hell with its crackling and frequent
> sound dropouts. Apparently this is a very widely known problem, and in
> most cases, is unfixable (especially when using it on a motherboard with
> a VIA chipset, like I am).
>
> My main priority is in getting a *clean* sound. The subtler aspects of
> audio fidelity are secondary in comparison to this, but still very
> important to me.
>
> So which sound card should I get which *is* properly supported under Linux,
> and will give good audio fidelity, and *no crackling*???
Ensoniq AudioPCI
last time it was sold a Creative soundblaster 64 PCI
It is a cool 4 speaker card.
There are even descriptions on the net to add digital input and output !
Linux support is 100 % AFAICT
I have such a card and have no issues with it.
Note that it has no synthesis support ( for playing MIDI )
It will be probably hard to find this card today,
because it is good and cheap , so it is a threat to Live!
which is crap and expensive :-) and Creative does everything
possible to kill it...
--
David Balazic
==============
"Be excellent to each other." - Bill & Ted
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
------------------------------
From: David Balazic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Virtual Framebuffer
Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 18:03:06 +0200
emak wrote:
>
> Hi.
>
> I've got a GeForce II Mx based video card. Whe I start Linux, it switches
> in frame buffer mode.
>
> It's not a problem as long as I use X and stay like that. But if I use a
> virtual console, I can't go back to X : display freezes.
>
> Anyone know what to do ? Is it possible to avoid using the virtual frame
> buffer for the console ?
>
> thanks.
Are you using the nVidia binary-only drivers ?
The have know issues with the framebuffer devices.
You can turn the frame buffer off and use text-mode.
Consult the documentation ( /usr/src/Linux/Documentation ,
look into the fb directory and also the kernel-parameters file )
--
David Balazic
==============
"Be excellent to each other." - Bill & Ted
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
------------------------------
From: Kris Kersey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Hercules Game Theatre XP
Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 12:13:25 -0400
Andrew,
If you are looking for a great soundcard the plain ES1371 from Ensoniq
is a great choice. We recently did a soundcard roundup at
LinuxHardware.org where we tested 4 soundcards under Linux and found
that the ES1371 produced the best sound quality without the crackling
found in the Live. You can find the full review here:
http://www.linuxhardware.org/article.pl?sid=01/04/16/1249249&mode=thread
Also included in the review is the Game Theater. We found that with the
currently released stable drivers that there are many issues. Read the
review for the full low-down. Also for an update on performance with
the bleeding-edge drivers look here:
http://www.linuxhardware.org/article.pl?sid=01/05/11/208229&mode=thread
--
Kris Kersey
LinuxHardware.org Site Manager
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Andrew Luke Nesbit wrote:
>
> In comp.os.linux.hardware you write:
>
> >[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >> I am very seriously considering buying one of these cards because I am completely
>fed up with my SB Live! and the unresolvable crackling problem. (I am choosing this
>one over the SonicFury or Santa Cruz because
> >> of the cool breakout box that it comes with.)
>
> >> Can anybody verify that this card works properly under Linux? Are any of its
>features lacking in support?
>
> >You'll need a bleeding-edge kernel (and I do mean bleeding-edge:
> >2.4.4ac4 or newer) to get intelligable output from it.
>
> >I'm not sure how well anything other than 2-channel waveout/wavein is
> >supported though.. I have one in one of my dual boot boxen right now,
> >but that machine has severe stability (hardware) issues, so I don't use
> >it much.
>
> >As far as Linux support is concerned, the best (modern) card to get is
> >the SBLive. The GTXP should only get better, but it'll be a while
> >before you can take advantage of its fancier features. And Philips
> >hasn't released any specs at all. :)
>
> I currently have an SB Live! and that is the very reason why I am looking
> to buy a new card... it's giving me hell with its crackling and frequent
> sound dropouts. Apparently this is a very widely known problem, and in
> most cases, is unfixable (especially when using it on a motherboard with
> a VIA chipset, like I am).
>
> My main priority is in getting a *clean* sound. The subtler aspects of
> audio fidelity are secondary in comparison to this, but still very
> important to me.
>
> So which sound card should I get which *is* properly supported under Linux,
> and will give good audio fidelity, and *no crackling*???
>
> -Andrew
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Mathew A. Hennessy)
Crossposted-To: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus
Subject: xmms + a7m = :( (fixed)
Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 16:46:19 -0000
Hi,
Just lettin ya know, I was having a hell of a time with the A7M
builtin sound adapter with XMMS in KDE. It would simply stop after
playing up to a minute of audio. I downloaded the latest linux
development driver from:
http://members.home.net/puresoft/cmpci-5.64.tar.gz
compiled it, modprobe'd it, and so far it seems pretty solid.
--
If it sounds too good to be true, it's probably Linux.
"Life is sweet, but revenge - more so." - BOFH
"You can never entirely stop being what you once were. That's why it's important
to be the right person today, and not put it off till tomorrow." - Larry Wall
------------------------------
From: Vladimir Florinski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Disk errors with kernel 2.4.2
Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 09:33:33 -0700
Vladimir Florinski wrote:
>
> is defective. The log file would occasionally have this message:
>
> hda: status error: status=0x58 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest }
> hda: drive not ready for command
>
> The disk is a brand new 40GB IBM 60GXP series (ATA-100), using dma
> transfers (up to 33MB/s, I presume, since this is a BX chipset)
>
> /dev/hda:
>
> Model=IC35L040AVER07-0, FwRev=ER4OA41A, SerialNo=SX0SXLL6552 Config={
> HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs } RawCHS=16383/16/63,
> TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=40 BuffType=DualPortCache,
> BuffSize=1916kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16 CurCHS=4047/16/255,
> CurSects=-217054981, LBA=yes, LBAsects=80418240 IORDY=on/off,
> tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120} PIO modes: pio0 pio1
> pio2 pio3 pio4
> DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 *udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5
>
Well, I found this is similar to the bug #27614 (from the RedHat's bugzilla).
Someone reported this 0x58 error and the reply was that it's caused by using
higher DMA modes and may be caused by cables. But I am not using higher modes
since the BX can only do 33MB/s (mode2, I think). Cables are old style (40-pin),
but why would they be a problem?
Of course, I could turn DMA off, but this would cancel all advantages of having
a fast hard drive. The transfer rate without DMA is only 4MB/s, while it's
almost 20MB/s with DMA.
--
Vladimir
------------------------------
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.misc
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Sound problem -> warnings about modules
Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 16:55:01 GMT
I have installed SuSE 7.1 on my PC with the soundcard SB128 using YAST2 and
alsaconf. In the file /var/log/warn I have the following warnings:
modprobe: Can't locate module snd-card-1
modprobe: Can't locate module snd-card-2
modprobe: Can't locate module snd-card-3
modprobe: Can't locate module sound-slot-1
modprobe: Can't locate module sound-service-1-0
modprobe: Can't locate module sound-slot-2
modprobe: Can't locate module sound-service-2-3
modprobe: Can't locate module sound-slot-3
modprobe: Can't locate module sound-service-3-3
modprobe: Can't locate module char-major-145
As far as I can see the following was changed in /etc/modules.conf when
I installed the soundcard:
#
# YaST2: sound cards support
#
alias char-major-116 snd
options snd snd_cards_limit=1 snd_major=116
alias snd-card-0 snd-card-ens1370
options snd-card-ens1370 snd_id=card1 snd_index=0
#
# YaST2: sound system dependent part
#
alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-11 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
So can someone help me eliminate the warning messages? I don't even know
where to start searching for the problem.
Bernd
------------------------------
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