RE: Reproducible SCSI Error with Adaptec 7902 & ST336607LW

* RE: Reproducible SCSI Error with Adaptec 7902 & ST336607LW
@ 2003-03-18 15:58 Cress, Andrew R
  2003-03-18 16:26 ` Terry Barnaby
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 4+ messages in thread
From: Cress, Andrew R @ 2003-03-18 15:58 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 'Terry Barnaby'; +Cc: linux-kernel

Terry,

>From your description in (1) below it sounds like the disk firmware did go
out to lunch.
Disk firmware is complex, and there are always possibilities that it can
hang/crash so that it won't respond, especially since a new disk model comes
out every 9-12 months.  

To get a disk firmware problem escalated you will need to gather some
evidence:
  1) The current firmware level (you have this already)
  2) The mode pages of the drive (you can use sgmode or other tools to
get/set these)
     See http://scsirastools.sourceforge.net for sgmode
     One thing to check, is whether SMART on or off has an effect (page 1c
0a 88 means completely off).  
     SMART processing on the drive runs in background on the disk and can
cause strange errors.
  3) A SCSI trace of the problem (requires a SCSI analyzer)
     If you don't have a SCSI analyzer, the bug conditions would have to be
very well-defined so 
     that it could be reproduced readily by Seagate.

Hopefully you can devise a workaround by tweaking the disk mode pages, since
reporting, analyzing, and producing a new disk firmware version would take
longer.

Andy

-----Original Message-----
From: Terry Barnaby [mailto:terry@beam.ltd.uk] 
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2003 4:38 AM
To: Cress, Andrew R
Cc: 'Ingo Oeser'; Michael Madore; Justin T. Gibbs;
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Reproducible SCSI Error with Adaptec 7902

Hi Andy,

We have just updated to the latest driver 1.3.4. This has stopped the
drive locking up, but we are now getting nasty SCSI error reports
in /var/log/messages. Will continue to delve into this.

However, what ever the fault that triggers our drive to lock-up, the
drive certainly locks up. It locks up with LED on and will not respond
to a SCSI bus reset. We need to power cycle the system to get the drive
working again. We have tried two Seagate ST336607LW drives both exibit
the same behaviour. It appears to only happen when Linux is running in
SMP mode and when the drive is running in packetized mode.

So there is certainly the possibility of the Seagate ST336607LW not 
responding to resets. This may be a firmware fault so we have talked
to Seagate about the issue. The statement is the result of our direct 
question:

> I realise that the problem could be due to the Linux SCSI driver, the
Motherboard SCSI controller, the SCSI lead or the drive. We are used to
> tracking down such nasty problems. However, I have one firm pointer:
> 
> 1. Once the drive is locked up, with its LED on, a SCSI bus reset will
>     not clear the drive. A full poweroff/poweron cycle is needed.
> 
> So I ask again, is there a case where the drive will not respond to a
> SCSI bus reset ? 

Is there any way of getting this information to higher level Seagate 
support ?

Terry

Cress, Andrew R wrote:
> Ingo,
> 
> Our testing with that drive (same firmware, using same aic7902 chipset)
has
> not shown any problems like this.  However, we were using a later aic79xx
> driver versions (1.3.x).  That upgrade should be the first step.
> 
> I wouldn't get too excited about the statement by a level-1 Seagate
support
> guy, probably just a blanket statement when they want to disclaim
> responsibility.  
> 
> Andy
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ingo Oeser [mailto:ingo.oeser@informatik.tu-chemnitz.de] 
> Sent: Saturday, March 15, 2003 8:12 AM
> To: Terry Barnaby
> Cc: Michael Madore; Justin T. Gibbs; linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: Re: Reproducible SCSI Error with Adaptec 7902
> 
> 
> On Fri, Mar 14, 2003 at 04:17:59PM +0000, Terry Barnaby wrote:
> 
>>The Seagate ST336607LW has firmware: 0004.
>>Seagate have stated to me that this is the latest.
>>They have also stated to me:
>>
>>  Issuing an unrecognized or illegal command to the drive can cause the
>>  drive to go into a hardware fault mode where it will no longer respond,
>>  and may or may not respond to a SCSI BUS reset. It seems, in this case,
>>  the drive will no longer respond to any commands issued by the
>>  controller.
>>
>>Is this "feature" now common on SCSI drives ????
> 
> 
> Could we add a KERN_WARNING printk in sd.c quoting/referencing
> this message on inquiry detecting this device? 
> 
> So sysadmins who are used to SCSI being robust could return the
> drive to their vendors in exchange to a drive working along the
> SCSI specs after reading this message.
> 
> Thanks in the name of the sysadmins.
> 
> Regards
> 
> Ingo Oeser
> -
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-- 
Dr Terry Barnaby                     BEAM Ltd
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