Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S264447AbTFIO4y (ORCPT ); Mon, 9 Jun 2003 10:56:54 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S264448AbTFIO4x (ORCPT ); Mon, 9 Jun 2003 10:56:53 -0400 Received: from mail.ithnet.com ([217.64.64.8]:58885 "HELO heather.ithnet.com") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S264447AbTFIO4v (ORCPT ); Mon, 9 Jun 2003 10:56:51 -0400 Date: Mon, 9 Jun 2003 17:10:11 +0200 From: Stephan von Krawczynski To: Stephan von Krawczynski Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, willy@w.ods.org, gibbs@scsiguy.com, marcelo@conectiva.com.br, green@namesys.com Subject: Re: Undo aic7xxx changes (now rc7+aic20030603) Message-Id: <20030609171011.7f940545.skraw@ithnet.com> In-Reply-To: <20030608134901.363ebe42.skraw@ithnet.com> References: <2804790000.1052441142@aslan.scsiguy.com> <20030509120648.1e0af0c8.skraw@ithnet.com> <20030509120659.GA15754@alpha.home.local> <20030509150207.3ff9cd64.skraw@ithnet.com> <20030605181423.GA17277@alpha.home.local> <20030608131901.7cadf9ea.skraw@ithnet.com> <20030608134901.363ebe42.skraw@ithnet.com> Organization: ith Kommunikationstechnik GmbH X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.9.2 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2069 Lines: 50 Hello all, I just finished another bunch of tests around the discussed issue and it's getting to an end. Yesterday I started using the test box with UP kernel instead of SMP, because I have the feeling the whole problem is somewhere around an SMP race condition. As far as I can see now the box runs 24h stable _and_ (and this is the important part) one problem I did not talk about till now is completely gone: During the whole testing with SMP I recognised that the tar-verify always brought up "content differs" warnings. Which basically means that the filesize is ok but the content is not. As there might be various causes for this (bad tape, bad drive, bad cabling) I did not give very much about it. But it turns out there are no more such warnings when using an UP kernel (on the same box with the complete same hardware including tapes). >From this experience I would conclude the following (for my personal test case): 1) aic-driver has problems with smp/up switching (meaning crashes when trying an SMP build with nosmp). This is completely reproducable. 2) aic-driver (almost no matter what version) has problems with SMP setup and tape drives. Obviously data integrity is not given. This is completely reproducable in my test setup. For Marcelo: It seems you can take any version of the aic driver for small box setups with UP, I never saw any troubles with it. As soon as you look at SMP flush it down the t..let. For Justin: Thank you for your continous openness and support in the whole issue in form of exactly _zero_ comments (,besides "how do you know aic is to blame?"). For Willy: I honour your efforts, but we are not capable of solving the issue. For Oleg: Stay tuned, I will test the re-creation issue and your patch. And now I go and buy a Symbios controller and re-try. Regards, Stephan - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/