[ATA] and re(4) stability issues

[Oliver Peter]

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 03:01:30PM +0100, Victor Balada Diaz wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 12:08:40PM +0000, Oliver Peter wrote:
> > On Tue, Dec 09, 2008 at 07:52:37PM +0100, Victor Balada Diaz wrote:
...
> I can use GENERIC kernel again (ie, USB enabled) and so far
> i didn't find any problem yet. No more interface up/down problems
> and no more interrupt storms. I must say that i haven't tested
> this enough, because the interrupt storms in ATA code start to
> happen after a few days of uptime load, but at least the problems
> with the realtek seem to be gone. 

I found out that I'm able to 'force' the interrupt storm by provoking
higher disk I/O.  Just let dd write to a file in a loop for some hours
and watch vmstat:

    while true; do dd if=/dev/zero of=BLA bs=1M count=1000; done

First you'll see that the throughput will decrease, and a few
hours later you'll have /var/log/messages / dmesg full of
interrupt storm messages.
 
> If you upgrade to 7.1 -BETA2 you'll also get SATA support for
> the IXP card. With 7.0 it will work as ATA 33 in compatibility mode.

Wow!  That's good to hear as well.  I'll definitely switch to
-STABLE or 7.1-PRERELASE sooner or later.  I'll just give it a try
on my other machines at first.
 
> I hope this helps you.

Absolutely, cheers mate.  I owe you one!

~ollie

-- 
Oliver PETER, email: oliver at peter.de.com, ICQ# 113969174
"If it feels good, you're doing something wrong."
                                      -- Coach McTavish