Re: [zfs][hardware] Reproducible kernel panic in 8.0-STABLE

[Stephane LAPIE]

Torsten Kersandt wrote:

Hi Stephane

I currently use some excellent cards from Supermicro, and these seem to be

I would not use them for RAID but as SATA/SAS controllers very good.

Supermicro 8 Port SATA 2 Card (PCI/PCI-X) AOC-SAT2-MV8
Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8, 8-Port (PCI-E)SAS/SATA Card

For about £80.00/USD130.00 each - not bad

Regards
Torsten

the only 8 port PCIx and PCI-E available on the market running on The marvel chipset.

Actually, I do have both cards.



-> Supermicro 8 Port SATA 2 Card (PCI/PCI-X) AOC-SAT2-MV8









-> Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8, 8-Port (PCI-E)SAS/SATA Card



As an additional comment :







Best regards,
--
Stephane LAPIE, EPITA SRS, Promo 2005
"Even when they have digital readouts, I can't understand them."
--MegaTokyo

I have been using them for one year now, and I can say this about both of them : This is what I am using right now, I have a server with two of them. It's chip is a Marvell MV88SX6081 8-port SATA II PCI-X Controller. I had virtually nothing to say against this card while using it under FreeBSD up to 7.2-STABLE, but it seems drive hotplug handling is truly lacking in 8.X, though whether this is a problem on the card's side or on some recent change in ATA handling on FreeBSD's side is lost on me. But the current reality is that I am getting random kernel panics for what seems to be ATA queue handling woes. Also, re-detection of drives in BIOS seems to be utterly buggy, so the above hotplug handling problem might be related to the hardware itself. This controller does not have a driver for FreeBSD, as of 8.0-STABLE, and documentation for it is not public. I have asked sam@ for advice and help on obtaining documentation. Plus, I tried it under Linux, and the mvsas driver available for it is less than satisfying. Drive disconnection/hiccups handling is severely lacking, and I busted several mdadm RAIDs while using this card in test machines, upon "going over the speed limit" and losing all plugged in drives until next reboot. (To be fair, the SVN version of the mvsas driver is a little more stable, but in a "I will only disconnect one drive at a time, so if you see one drive going down, you'll have the time to shut down the RAID array" way.) (As a result, I couldn't exactly say I am satisfied with Marvell on FreeBSD so far. I am seriously considering going for Areca.)

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