> I had this problem once, it was caused by a faulty SCSI controller
> configuration. What brand of controller do you have?
>
> In my case, with an Adaptec 2940-UW controller, I was
> explicitly setting
> the speed and not letting the controller auto-negotiate with the disk.
> Once I set it correctly (auto-negotiation), the problem went away. A
> call to Adaptec confirmed that the explicit setting should not be used
> unless there is a specific problem. It is something to do
> with the SCSI
> spec and the way the controller works. Not giving an explicit setting
> forces the controller to negotiate with each drive.
> Unfortunately, there
> is no way to query status from the controller after that so
> you have no
> way to tell what setting it wound up using.
I am using the Adaptec 7890 Controller, on an Asus P2B-DS MB, using the
Adaptec 7xxx series kernel driver from kernel ver 2.2.6.
Luckily after applying all the applicable patches, etc, I know have all my
RAID-5 devices up and operational.
Unfortunately, I am in no way shape or form a coder, so I am using all
defaults currently for all my drivers and devices. I am starting to learn
how to pick through the code by following all the instructions etc on the
various mailing-lists I am subscribed to. But I have a long way to go...
The problem seems to be isolated to when there is pauses in the transfer.
For instance I can grab a kernel-source tarball, put it on one of my RAID-5
devices, and untar it, and it just flies and there are no errors.
But like I said. The other day I tried to install Oracle 8.0.5, and it goes
through different install segments, it'll uncompress and copy some data,
then it goes through a whole linking segment, then it'll try to go back and
copy some more data, this seems to be when I get the SCSI device timeouts
and retries, and finally SCSI device resets, which results in my computer
hanging. It seems to be fairly isolated though... Thats why I figured it
might have something to do with the latencies of dealing with the transfer
from a IDE CDROM to a software raid-5 device.
I guess I will just keep an eye on it...
I do want to thank all you people on the list though who take the time to
answer some of my "novice" questions. Over the last couple of days I have
made some serious headway into getting my system up to how I want it to act
and perform. I'm afraid if it wasn't for you guys I would have had to hang
my head in shame and crawl back to the
MS NT way of life. ;)
Thanks Again,
M.C.
