RE: 3Ware Escalade Issues
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Nathan Vidican Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 10:24 AM To: Charles Swiger Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: 3Ware Escalade Issues Charles Swiger wrote: On Feb 22, 2006, at 12:31 PM, Don O'Neil wrote: 3) Is there some way I can do a faster FSCK, or perhaps 'fool' the system into thinking the file system is clean? If you update to 5.x or later, you can use background FSCK rather than having to wait for the FSCK to complete the way it does under 4.x. I wasn't aware 5.x could do this. My next question is how are my existing apps going to be affected by upgrading to 5.x? If you install the 4.x compatibility libraries, your old 4.x binaries should continue to work just fine. However, you will want to rebuild as much of your existing software under 5.x as possible. Also, if you update to 5.x, you can run the smartmon tools, which will let you do a drive self-test using SMART, this will give much better information about what is going on with the drive, and also give an estimate of its remaining lifespan. Yes, this would help a lot!!! Well, once you're running 5.x, install smartmon and run: smartctl -t long /dev/ad0, or whatever the right device is. How old are the drives, if you know? They're less than 2 years old, and still under warranty. This is the second drive to fail and it's driving me nuts. They're Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 6Y250P0 250 GB PATA drives... Never had a problem with that particular drive until this batch. Can anyone suggest some good 250GB PATA drives for me to use? I might as well swap them all out since I'm starting over. The 6000 series Escalade card I'm using doesn't support anything more than 250 GB. I've had somewhat better luck with the so-called special edition variants of the drives, such as the WD1200JB, which have more cache RAM and a longer warranty period than the generic versions According to Western Digital, ONLY their 'SD' or (RAID-Edition) drives should be attempted in an array; WDC utilizes proprietary error correction mechanisms which mangle the error-handling done by an array controller. In short, while the drive is doing it's internal error-correction, the raid controller sees it as a drive failure and a whole new mess develops. Whoah, there chicken little! The article is in Western Digital's knowledgebase, article# 1397 Here are the relevant bits: ...If you install and use a desktop edition hard drive connected to a RAID controller, the drive may not work correctly. This is caused by the normal error recovery procedure that a desktop edition hard drive uses ...When an error is found on a desktop edition hard drive, the drive will enter into a deep recovery cycle to attempt to repair the error, recover the data from the problematic area, and then reallocate a dedicated area to replace the problematic area. This process can take up to 2 minutes depending on the severity of the issue... ... Most RAID controllers allow a very short amount of time for a hard drive to recover from an error. If a hard drive takes too long to complete this process, the drive will be dropped from the RAID array... So let me explain. If you have a WD ide disk that is NOT in an array, has a major error, and goes away and hides for TWO MINUTES this is supposed to BE OK in a desktop? How many users do you know are going to sit twiddling their thumbs waiting for 2 minutes for their computer to unfreeze? I thought so. You must have an extremely elastic idea of what an acceptable error handling is on an IDE drive. Yes, IDE, you know, Intelligent Drive Electronics?!? As in, intelligent enough to know that if the problem is so severe it's going to take 2 minutes of scrubbing to fix, that it's a sign of imminent disk failure and the disk ought to be thrown out anyway? I think what we have here is a bit of creative justification by WD for why you should pay more money for their RAID edition drives. I'll tell you what. I will keep an eye on my ATA raid setups that use WD drives in them. If one disk dies for 2 minutes and the array dumps it, I'll RMA the drive back to WD for a new one. You by contrast, can keep your failing drives in your array until they croak permanently. Ted ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: 3Ware Escalade Issues
-Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Chuck Swiger Sent: Sunday, February 19, 2006 6:47 AM To: Don O'Neil Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 3Ware Escalade Issues Don O'Neil wrote: There appears to be a bad sector on one of the drives according to smartctl, but nothing serious. What that may mean is that there have been many bad sectors, which have been corrected using the spares, until no more spare sectors are left for replacements. That drive may well fail catastrophically, soon. _Will_ fail soon! However, every time the system tried to write to that sector in the array, the system would freeze, and then reboot, and of course it would say the file system isn't clean, etc... Since the file system is 1 TB in size, it would take 8+ hours to FSCK it. The array is only striped, and not mirrored or built with redunancy. I'm basically using the card/driver to make one large volume for a web server. OK. Well, if this data is important to you, you should give consideration to using a RAID-1, RAID-10, or RAID-5 configuration to gain redundancy. RAID0-1 is the way to go - disks are cheap now. Fry's was selling 300GB UDMA Seagates yesterday for $69.00 with rebates. You can find Promise and Highpoint UDMA RAID 100 cards on Ebay for $15 or so. I have a few questions: 1) Is this a known bug? I'm running FreeBSD 4.11 (for software compatibility No it is not a bug. issues at the moment, I will upgrade at some point in the future) Normally, the OS will only kill the affected processes using that sector, No, Chuck, the OS has no knowledge of bad sectors on the disk. All UNIXes out there assume perfect storage media, and perfect RAM. It is the hardware's job to handle error correction or containment. All the OS knows in a disk error is that it is pulling data off the disk and doing something with it. If the data that's pulled off is corrupted and happens to be a device driver or some such, or other part of the kernel (perhaps it was swapped out) then the system will crash. Otherwise the system won't know the difference if the area is user data. If it's a program then the results will be the same as if the program had a bug in it, it will unexpectedly terminate. People have lost databases due to corruption by not knowing about disk failures like this. but without knowing where it is, perhaps it's affecting some important file like the kernel itself, /bin/sh...? 2) How can I trap the errors and eliminate the re-boot issue? Shut down the system. Replace the failing hard drive. Use dd to make an exact copy onto the new drive on some other system. and put the new drive back into the array. Note that the replacement drive must be an exact match for this to work, otherwise you will have to backup your data and rebuild the array. Speaking of which, do you have known-good backups available? 3) Is there some way I can do a faster FSCK, or perhaps 'fool' the system into thinking the file system is clean? If you update to 5.x or later, you can use background FSCK rather than having to wait for the FSCK to complete the way it does under 4.x. 4) Any suggestions on how to fix this? Also, if you update to 5.x, you can run the smartmon tools, which will let you do a drive self-test using SMART, this will give much better information about what is going on with the drive, and also give an estimate of its remaining lifespan. How old are the drives, if you know? A lot of the drive manufacturers these days are offering plenty generous warranties, it is likely his disk is still under warranty. Ted -- -Chuck ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.15.12/265 - Release Date: 2/20/2006 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: 3Ware Escalade Issues
Chuck, Thanks for the response, this helps me a lot... My answers are inline: Don O'Neil wrote: There appears to be a bad sector on one of the drives according to smartctl, but nothing serious. What that may mean is that there have been many bad sectors, which have been corrected using the spares, until no more spare sectors are left for replacements. That drive may well fail catastrophically, soon. I figured as much, which is why I'm going to re-build the whole array with a new drive, etc... Fortunatly I got all my data off ok without any issues. However, every time the system tried to write to that sector in the array, the system would freeze, and then reboot, and of course it would say the file system isn't clean, etc... Since the file system is 1 TB in size, it would take 8+ hours to FSCK it. The array is only striped, and not mirrored or built with redunancy. I'm basically using the card/driver to make one large volume for a web server. OK. Well, if this data is important to you, you should give consideration to using a RAID-1, RAID-10, or RAID-5 configuration to gain redundancy. Yes, and when I re-build it with will be RAID-5 rather than just RAID-0 I have a few questions: 1) Is this a known bug? I'm running FreeBSD 4.11 (for software compatibility . issues at the moment, I will upgrade at some point in the future) Normally, the OS will only kill the affected processes using that sector, but without knowing where it is, perhaps it's affecting some important file like the kernel itself, /bin/sh...? Actually the only thing that was on the array was a DB, so I think the failure may have been causing MySQL to go nuts, and cascading up. 2) How can I trap the errors and eliminate the re-boot issue? Shut down the system. Replace the failing hard drive. Use dd to make an exact copy onto the new drive on some other system. and put the new drive back into the array. Note that the replacement drive must be an exact match for this to work, otherwise you will have to backup your data and rebuild the array. Speaking of which, do you have known-good backups available? Of course I have backups!! Never work without them. I'm going to re-build with RAID-5 this time. 3) Is there some way I can do a faster FSCK, or perhaps 'fool' the system into thinking the file system is clean? If you update to 5.x or later, you can use background FSCK rather than having to wait for the FSCK to complete the way it does under 4.x. I wasn't aware 5.x could do this. My next question is how are my existing apps going to be affected by upgrading to 5.x? I have some builds of packages that were done by a company that is no longer in operation. I haven't fully figured out how they built the software yet so I can't re-build under 5.X yet. If I try to put the elf binaries and the other builds from 4.X on 5.X are they going to run ok or do I just need to give it a try? Would you suggest going all the way to 6.x or sticking with the 5.x chain? 4) Any suggestions on how to fix this? Also, if you update to 5.x, you can run the smartmon tools, which will let you do a drive self-test using SMART, this will give much better information about what is going on with the drive, and also give an estimate of its remaining lifespan. Yes, this would help a lot!!! How old are the drives, if you know? They're less than 2 years old, and still under warranty. This is the second drive to fail and it's driving me nuts. They're Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 6Y250P0 250 GB PATA drives... Never had a problem with that particular drive until this batch. Can anyone suggest some good 250GB PATA drives for me to use? I might as well swap them all out since I'm starting over. The 6000 series Escalade card I'm using doesn't support anything more than 250 GB. Thanks all again!!! Don ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: 3Ware Escalade Issues
Charles Swiger wrote: On Feb 22, 2006, at 12:31 PM, Don O'Neil wrote: 3) Is there some way I can do a faster FSCK, or perhaps 'fool' the system into thinking the file system is clean? If you update to 5.x or later, you can use background FSCK rather than having to wait for the FSCK to complete the way it does under 4.x. I wasn't aware 5.x could do this. My next question is how are my existing apps going to be affected by upgrading to 5.x? If you install the 4.x compatibility libraries, your old 4.x binaries should continue to work just fine. However, you will want to rebuild as much of your existing software under 5.x as possible. Also, if you update to 5.x, you can run the smartmon tools, which will let you do a drive self-test using SMART, this will give much better information about what is going on with the drive, and also give an estimate of its remaining lifespan. Yes, this would help a lot!!! Well, once you're running 5.x, install smartmon and run: smartctl -t long /dev/ad0, or whatever the right device is. How old are the drives, if you know? They're less than 2 years old, and still under warranty. This is the second drive to fail and it's driving me nuts. They're Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 6Y250P0 250 GB PATA drives... Never had a problem with that particular drive until this batch. Can anyone suggest some good 250GB PATA drives for me to use? I might as well swap them all out since I'm starting over. The 6000 series Escalade card I'm using doesn't support anything more than 250 GB. I've had somewhat better luck with the so-called special edition variants of the drives, such as the WD1200JB, which have more cache RAM and a longer warranty period than the generic versions According to Western Digital, ONLY their 'SD' or (RAID-Edition) drives should be attempted in an array; WDC utilizes proprietary error correction mechanisms which mangle the error-handling done by an array controller. In short, while the drive is doing it's internal error-correction, the raid controller sees it as a drive failure and a whole new mess develops. We've run into this several times now, both with our own in-house systems, and with those we've procured for others... trust me on this, if going with Western Digital drives... DO NOT use anything other than their 'SD' or RAID-Edition drives. Maxtor drives have no such issue AFAIK, nor Seagate... but only speaking from experience here not factual data. - WDC has a good explanation int he knowledge base on their website/support section. -- Nathan Vidican [EMAIL PROTECTED] Windsor Match Plate Tool Ltd. http://www.wmptl.com/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: 3Ware Escalade Issues
Don O'Neil wrote: Don, They're Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 6Y250P0 250 GB PATA drives... Never had a problem with that particular drive until this batch. I used the 80, 120 and 160GB version of that series in some of my servers built 2 years ago. Out of the 18 disks originally put in, I have 4 broken ones on my desk now. I'm not very happy with the overal performance when it comes to reliability of that series Maxtor. Can anyone suggest some good 250GB PATA drives for me to use? I might as well swap them all out since I'm starting over. The 6000 series Escalade card I'm using doesn't support anything more than 250 GB. I swapped the broken Maxtors with Seagate disks. I'm using 3ware 7500-4 for the PATA. Forgot what the SATA 3ware controller was, but so far no problem with that one (also on Maxtor disks). /Robin ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: 3Ware Escalade Issues
On Wednesday, February 22, 2006, at 10:04AM, Robin Vley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I swapped the broken Maxtors with Seagate disks. I too am a big fan of Seagate disks. So it Seagate it seems. Maxtor and Western Digital give 1 year on the low end and 3 year warranty on their Special Edition drives, whereas Seagate does a 5 year warranty on all their drives. This says something to me. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
3Ware Escalade Issues
Hi all, I've been experiencing some problems with my 3ware Escalade 6000 array lately that has been causing spontaneous reboots of the system. There appears to be a bad sector on one of the drives according to smartctl, but nothing serious. However, every time the system tried to write to that sector in the array, the system would freeze, and then reboot, and of course it would say the file system isn't clean, etc... Since the file system is 1 TB in size, it would take 8+ hours to FSCK it. The array is only striped, and not mirrored or built with redunancy. I'm basically using the card/driver to make one large volume for a web server. I have a few questions: 1) Is this a known bug? I'm running FreeBSD 4.11 (for software compatibility issues at the moment, I will upgrade at some point in the future) 2) How can I trap the errors and eliminate the re-boot issue? 3) Is there some way I can do a faster FSCK, or perhaps 'fool' the system into thinking the file system is clean? 4) Any suggestions on how to fix this? Thanks all!!! ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: 3Ware Escalade Issues
Don O'Neil wrote: There appears to be a bad sector on one of the drives according to smartctl, but nothing serious. What that may mean is that there have been many bad sectors, which have been corrected using the spares, until no more spare sectors are left for replacements. That drive may well fail catastrophically, soon. However, every time the system tried to write to that sector in the array, the system would freeze, and then reboot, and of course it would say the file system isn't clean, etc... Since the file system is 1 TB in size, it would take 8+ hours to FSCK it. The array is only striped, and not mirrored or built with redunancy. I'm basically using the card/driver to make one large volume for a web server. OK. Well, if this data is important to you, you should give consideration to using a RAID-1, RAID-10, or RAID-5 configuration to gain redundancy. I have a few questions: 1) Is this a known bug? I'm running FreeBSD 4.11 (for software compatibility issues at the moment, I will upgrade at some point in the future) Normally, the OS will only kill the affected processes using that sector, but without knowing where it is, perhaps it's affecting some important file like the kernel itself, /bin/sh...? 2) How can I trap the errors and eliminate the re-boot issue? Shut down the system. Replace the failing hard drive. Use dd to make an exact copy onto the new drive on some other system. and put the new drive back into the array. Note that the replacement drive must be an exact match for this to work, otherwise you will have to backup your data and rebuild the array. Speaking of which, do you have known-good backups available? 3) Is there some way I can do a faster FSCK, or perhaps 'fool' the system into thinking the file system is clean? If you update to 5.x or later, you can use background FSCK rather than having to wait for the FSCK to complete the way it does under 4.x. 4) Any suggestions on how to fix this? Also, if you update to 5.x, you can run the smartmon tools, which will let you do a drive self-test using SMART, this will give much better information about what is going on with the drive, and also give an estimate of its remaining lifespan. How old are the drives, if you know? -- -Chuck ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
