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Re: linux 2.6.15 and tape problems with aic79xx driver
2006-01-11 13:51:01
Here is an entry to the linux kernel bug report I just made related to this problem.
I am getting tire of no progress being made on the buggy Adaptec linux kernel
drivers.
I performed one more additional test yesterday. This machine actually has two
Adaptec adapters in it. The first is built into the mother board and is also a
39320a capable of 320 MB/s. It is on board a Tyan Thunder K8SD Pro MB. This
adapter was originally disabled by the vendor who supplied it (Monarch
Computers, Atlanta, GA) because they could not get it to test out without error.
So, they disabled it and supplied a separate pci add-on Adaptec 39320a card.
As supplied, this is what I originally had when this bug showed up.
So, I thought, why not configure the system with the tape drive connected to
this entirely separate adapter and see if this helps ? So, I did, and it made
no difference. The kernel found both adapters and all devices, but this error
still shows up.
Then after I wrote up this bug report, I thought I would reconfigure everything
back to the original configuration and then disable the on-board device as
before (thinking, perhaps this really is a bad adapter, and with a new kernel
driver, perhaps things will now actually work). So, now all the scsi devices
are connected to the pci adapter. Both the on-board and the pci adapter have
two separate wide channels capable of 16 devices each (grand total of 64
devices would be possible if all were connected and enabled). On channel 1 of
the pci adapter, I have 3 scsi hard drives. On channel 2, I have a single tape
drive (that works fine under 2.6.12.6 of the kernel). Typical arguments you
hear about scsi device problems are remedied by separating the faster hard
drives from the slower devices like tape drives or CD drives. So, this
argument cannot be made here since all are separate (and working in 2.6.12.6 ! )
So, with all these attempts at reconfiguration, the bug is still present in 2.
6.15 (actually any kernel 2.6.13.0 and greater). One improvement is that it
does not hang the system. It is just that the tape drive does not work.
If there is anything I can do to help debug this problem, please let me know.
I have read over on the AMANDA-users mailing list that I am not the only user
with problems getting their tape drives to work with the Adaptec drivers. I
have an LSI adapter that I may use next. If this does not get fixed soon, I
may never use Adaptec again. This makes no sense why they (Adaptec) would have
a driver out that fails.
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James D. Freels, Ph.D.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
freelsjd AT ornl DOT gov
http://www.comsol.com/stories/hfir/
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I have one machine that uses the aic7xxx driver of linux 2.6.15
and amanda and the tape driver are working fine. There is a fix in
2.6.15 to this driver that allowed this to happen that has been a bug
since the 2.6.12.x kernels (starting at 2.6.13, the bug showed up)
A similar bug on a second machine has been going on with the aic79xx
driver (for 320MB/s scsi) that is also supposed to have been fixed with
this kernel 2.6.15. I can tell the tape interface is much improved and the
system no longer hangs with tape access like it used to, but nevertheless
I cannot use the tape drive at the present time.
The tape drive is a Seagate 9sp40_000 (DSS-4) drive. Under 2.6.12.6 and
prior kernels, it works fine with AMANDA. The tape configuration shown
from mt status is:
SCSI 2 tape drive:
File number=0, block number=0, partition=0.
Tape block size 0 bytes. Density code 0x26 (DDS-4 or QIC-4GB).
Soft error count since last status=0
General status bits on (41010000):
BOT ONLINE IM_REP_EN
Now when I boot up under 2.6.15, the tape is found as expected and the output
of "mt status" is identical.
SCSI 2 tape drive:
File number=0, block number=0, partition=0.
Tape block size 0 bytes. Density code 0x26 (DDS-4 or QIC-4GB).
Soft error count since last status=0
General status bits on (41010000):
BOT ONLINE IM_REP_EN
However, if I try to write anything to the tape drive, it returns an error. For
example:
amlabel -f fea fea12
will spit out "input/output error".
I believe there is something missing in the tape configuration that is causing this
or it could still be a scsi driver bug (but I doubt it now).
Here is the input to the tape drive initialization:
# This file contains example definitions for different kinds of tape
# devices.
#
# You can find some examples in /usr/share/doc/mt-st/examples.
#
# A compressing DAT (DDS-4])
manufacturer = "SEAGATE" model = "DAT 9SP40-000" revision = "9100" {
scsi2logical=0
density=0x26
can-bsr=1
can-partitions=1
auto-lock=1
async-writes=1
read-ahead=1
buffering=1
mode1 blocksize=0 compression=0
#mode2 blocksize=0 compression=1
#mode3 blocksize=32768 compression=0
#mode4 blocksize=32768 compression=1
}
Does anyone have an idea as to what could be wrong ?
Are there others having problems with aic79xx driver and their tape drives ?
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James D. Freels, Ph.D.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
freelsjd AT ornl DOT gov
http://www.comsol.com/stories/hfir/
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