Hi Ben, We have not seen similar issue with other linux distributions and with debian amd64 distribution My guess is that there is some flaw with the high memory management(>=4G in 32bit mode) either or both in Buslogic driver and debian kernel. Debian uses "amd64" kernel for >4G memory in 32bit mode while most other linux distribution use "bigmem" kernel configuration. Is this combination causing the problem? And what is the difference between "amd64 kernel in 32bit mode" and "real amd64 kernel"?
We configure the virtual device to be used in the virtual machine's configuration, which specified clearly the memory size, cpu number, disk size, nic type before a VM is powered on.... And I think the adapter type is determined by OS with PCI vender ID. So this is unlikely a vmware related bug. We can use pvscsi for best performance but our customer may need the buslogic virtual adapter so we have to support this configuration. Regards, Peter Cao ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ben Hutchings" <b...@decadent.org.uk> To: "Peter Cao" <pengzhen...@vmware.com> Cc: "chunmei(Tracy) Huang" <cmhu...@vmware.com>, "Arvind Kumar" <arku...@vmware.com>, 678...@bugs.debian.org Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2012 11:05:43 AM Subject: Re: Bug#678236: linux-image-2.6.32-5-amd64: Disk IO error when running debian 6.0.x with buslogic virtual disk and 4G+ mem in a VMware VM On Wed, 2012-06-20 at 19:17 -0700, Peter Cao wrote: > Hi Ben, > > The disk became read-only when the error happens so the log was not saved. > But I have a screenshot for the error msg: > http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?msg=5;filename=debian-605-32bit-buslogic-6Gmem-IO_error.png;att=2;bug=678236 > > We have not see any error with PVSCSI adapter so far. > And there is no error with debian 64bit release but only the 32bit release > with large memory+buslogic. [...] So far as I can see, BusLogic has not been changed in any significant way between Linux 2.6.32 and current mainline (3.5-rc3). So unless you know better, this problem also affects mainline Linux and should be fixed there first. But what is the point of using this driver at all under VMware, when we could use vmw_pvscsi? Do you make the same SCSI devices available to the guest through both an emulated BusLogic adapter and paravirtual SCSI adapter at the same time? In that case, could the BusLogic driver detect that an adapter is actually an emulation (based on PCI subsystem vendor ID?) and ignore it because the vmw_pvscsi driver will work better? If not, isn't it a bug in VMware that it enables the BusLogic device and not the PV-SCSI device for Debian guests? Ben. -- Ben Hutchings Every program is either trivial or else contains at least one bug -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-kernel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1596554928.6288834.1340249910450.javamail.r...@vmware.com
