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List:       linux-aacraid-devel
Subject:    RE: another 2.4.12 + aacraid + SuSE failure.
From:       Steve_Boley () Dell ! com
Date:       2001-10-31 11:29:00
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Been pounding away on recompiling 2.4.10 on PE2500 with PERC3/DI and was
getting the same hang at CHECKING ROOT FILESYSTEM.  Was trying all the
different aacraid patches and finally thought "Hey what if it's the
kernel?????".  So I then decided to go to the kernel/people folder and get
the latest patch that Alan Cox has for the 2.4.10 kernel which was
2.4.10-ac12 and see what happened.  Recompiled with the aacraid patch for
the kernel and no hang.  Some bug in the base kernel at kernel.org is
causing the issue which Alan patched in his patches somewhere.  I would
assume that if you patch 12 and 13 you will get the same results.  I was
doing this recompile in Mandrake 8.1 and I don't know what their base source
kernel is but Redhat uses the Alan Cox kernel as it's base kernel and hence
no problems with redhat recompiles.

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Pascoe [mailto:c.pascoe@itee.uq.edu.au]
Sent: Thursday, October 25, 2001 8:36 PM
To: Steve_Boley@exchange.dell.com
Cc: linux-PowerEdge@exchange.dell.com;
linux-aacraid-devel@exchange.dell.com
Subject: Re: another 2.4.12 + aacraid + SuSE failure.


Hi Steve,

> This is directed mainly toward Matt and the other guys, almost all
hardware
> and software vendors allow people to sign on for beta testing (pretty much
> what the whole linux experience is) of drivers and firmware.  What about
> Dell starting a program for our Linux customers to beta drive our drivers
> and firmware before official release?  Of course this would be with
> explicitly implied that this would not be the responsibility of Dell for
> loss of data or any other complications arising from this.  There is a
newer
> firmware for the adaptec controllers that will greatly enhance performance
> over current 2.5 revision that is released.

I know we have a 4400 identically configured to our production machines,
(apart from the "rev 01"/"rev 02" issue) for the sole purpose of testing,
and would be interested in seeing this, for testing as well.  So long as we
could downgrade again, of course :)

> You aren't able to go in single mode and manually run a fsck on the
> partitions in the 2.4.12 kernel?  Looking at kernel lists these kinds of
> problems were surfacing starting with the 2.4.11 kernel so it's more than
> likely more a kernel specific type of problem.

Nope, I couldn't run fsck from single user. I didn't have any other kernels
handy to boot with other than the 2.4.2 one, so I couldn't try going back to
2.4.11.  Perhaps some others can comment on this.  Unfortunately for me,
it's not an easy thing to replicate - when the filesystem was unmounted
properly, everything goes through fine, and my few attempts to corrupt it on
subsequently have been in vain.

> Have you been monitoring the kernel lists?  There is a wealth of
information
> on them but they are quite long and tedious to go through.

Yes, I try to monitor them; but usually my days run short and I don't get to
read everything I'd like.  I figured out a way around the 2.4.10 sd.c
problems through that, and do try to read up.  I didn't see anything
directly mentioning the fsck problems in my quick searches though.  I
suspect the lack of time thing hits all of us who can't dedicate time to
looking through them.  I know that's why I've frequently held off for a
while in mentioning my problems when others see them - hoping for someone
here to provide some feedback on what's going on.

I don't doubt everyone that knows about these things reads the mailing list
periodically (there's not that much volume!) but when it seems that things
just aren't heard, it's not all that confidence-inspiring to me, at least.
Something like "we've seen mention of this ... on LKML that may be causing
it" would at least give other interested parties here something to look at.

> Anyways, hang in there and we'll get an answer on these issues sometime in
> the near future.  Matt is staying on the aacraid and kernel issues rather
> well for a man who is a proud new pop!!!

Thanks, good to know that somebody will hopefully provide some feedback
soon.  Congratulations Matt, I know from experience with my staff here that
having newborns can be lots of fun - especially juggling them with work!

Chris

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