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* Single P4, many IDE PCI cards == trouble??
@ 2003-08-29  0:49 Nick Urbanik
  2003-08-29  9:50 ` Alan Cox
  2003-09-06 12:44 ` Single P4, many IDE PCI cards == trouble?? Steve Bromwich
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 18+ messages in thread
From: Nick Urbanik @ 2003-08-29  0:49 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Linux Kernel list

Dear Folks,

With a single 2.26GHz P4, an Asus P4B533-E motherboard, is it possible
to reliably use two additional PCI IDE cards (using SI680), one hard
disk per channel, and have the thing work reliably?

Could this be the cause of my lockups?  I have a total of 6 ATA133
hard disks, one DVD player all connected to the two IDE channels on
the motherboard, and one disk to each of the channels of the SI680
cards.

Some people have told me that this is just asking for trouble, and
that I should buy a 3ware card instead.

I am also using software RAID1, RAID5 with LVM on top.

My machine locks solid at unpredictable intervals with no response
from keyboard lights, no Alt-Sysrq-x response, etc, with a wide
variety of 2.4.x kernels, including 2.4.22.

--
Nick Urbanik   RHCE                               nicku(at)vtc.edu.hk
Dept. of Information & Communications Technology
Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education (Tsing Yi)
Tel:   (852) 2436 8576, (852) 2436 8713          Fax: (852) 2436 8526
PGP: 53 B6 6D 73 52 EE 1F EE EC F8 21 98 45 1C 23 7B     ID: 7529555D
GPG: 7FFA CDC7 5A77 0558 DC7A 790A 16DF EC5B BB9D 2C24   ID: BB9D2C24




^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread
* Re: Single P4, many IDE PCI cards == trouble??
@ 2003-10-22 16:36 Alex Finch
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 18+ messages in thread
From: Alex Finch @ 2003-10-22 16:36 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: linux-kernel


  For what it's worth, here is my experience. Hope it helps you, and 
anyone else searching for solutions to the problems I have encountered...


  Our New Server
  ==============

(+ Lessons learnt along the way)
   ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Motherboard: Asus P4S8X-X

CPU:         Intel Pentium 4 2400MHz

Memory:     2 x 512Mb PC2700
  +was supposed to be 3x512Mb but the motherboard can't handle 3xPC2700
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Network:     3Com  3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado]

             Do NOT use the onboard LAN - performance is diabolical!
            ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Additional controller cards:

	   2xPromise Ultra133 Tx2 PCI-IDE cards
	   1xPromise Ultra66      PCI-IDE card

   Do note use 3 identical Promise IDE cards, either system will not
   +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
  boot or there will be i/o errors!
  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Disks
=====
  (In addition to system disk)

  10 x Maxtor 6Y060L0 60Gb
           attached to onboard ide and Promise Ultra133 cards
  4  x Maxtor 4A250J0 240Gb disk
           attached to Promise Ultra66 cards


Software:

  RedHat 9
  kernel  2.4.20

  Boot parameters modified as follows:

Edit  /boot/grub/menu.lst
and append
  ide2=noautotune ide3=noautotune ide4=noutotune ide5=noautotune
ide6=noautotune ide7=noautotune
to the line
  kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-8 ro root=LABEL=/

  this avoids errors of the type:
  ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

  hdh: dma_intr: bad DMA status (dma_stat=75)

  when accessing the disks on the Promise cards
					
					
  Thereafter formatted disks/created raid arrays/started raid/made 
filesystem no problem.   Four 240Gb disks formatted as one big disk via 
raid0!
  (/dev/md8 Size=989GB)			
					
Tape drive: Spectra Logic 2000 (a.k.a. TreeFrog) attached via
              Adaptec AIC-7892A SCSI card
             Use mtx version 1.2.17rel to drive the robot, more recent
            versions cause problems (author informed).
					
			

  Alex Finch, Research Fellow, Physics Department, Lancaster University.

  NB ( I am not subscribed to the list so contact me directly for more
information)


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 18+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2003-10-22 16:36 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 18+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2003-08-29  0:49 Single P4, many IDE PCI cards == trouble?? Nick Urbanik
2003-08-29  9:50 ` Alan Cox
2003-08-29 14:00   ` Nick Urbanik
2003-08-29 14:22     ` lk
2003-08-29 14:38     ` Alan Cox
2003-08-29 21:14       ` Erik Andersen
2003-08-30  3:46       ` Nick Urbanik
2003-09-08  6:13         ` Mike Fedyk
2003-09-08 17:20           ` Joel Jaeggli
2003-08-29 15:13     ` Valdis.Kletnieks
2003-08-31 12:43     ` Hans-Peter Jansen
2003-08-31 15:46       ` joe briggs
2003-08-31 23:41       ` Nick Urbanik
2003-09-01  6:01         ` many IDE PCI cards "spurious 8259a" irq15(SMBus nforce2) Resident Boxholder
2003-09-01  7:51           ` Alan Cox
2003-09-01 10:14             ` IDE PCI cards IOAPIC " Resident Boxholder
2003-09-06 12:44 ` Single P4, many IDE PCI cards == trouble?? Steve Bromwich
2003-10-22 16:36 Alex Finch

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