Any chance of "gvinum setstate" for RELENG_5?

[Paul Mather]

This morning, whilst checking my e-mail, I noticed that logcheck had
apprised me of the following:

=====
Unusual System Events
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Dec  4 08:01:28 handle kernel: ad1: TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA retrying (2 retries left) LBA=1581375
Dec  4 08:01:29 handle kernel: ad1: FAILURE - WRITE_DMA timed out
Dec  4 08:01:29 handle kernel: GEOM_VINUM: subdisk swap.p1.s0 is down
Dec  4 08:01:29 handle kernel: GEOM_VINUM: plex swap.p1 is down
Dec  4 08:01:29 handle kernel: GEOM_VINUM: subdisk root.p1.s0 is down
Dec  4 08:01:29 handle kernel: GEOM_VINUM: plex root.p1 is down
Dec  4 08:01:29 handle kernel: GEOM_VINUM: subdisk var.p1.s0 is down
Dec  4 08:01:29 handle kernel: GEOM_VINUM: plex var.p1 is down
Dec  4 08:01:29 handle kernel: GEOM_VINUM: subdisk usr.p1.s0 is down
Dec  4 08:01:29 handle kernel: GEOM_VINUM: plex usr.p1 is down
=====

This has happened before.  Unfortunately, ad1 is not actually "down" as
"gvinum list" reports---it's just "down" as far as gvinum is concerned.

Sadly, without "setstate," attempts to get the drive recognised as "up"
by gvinum seem to result in a panic/reboot/fsck (or at least appeared to
the last time this happened).  In fact, just rebooting the system with a
drive marked "down" appeared to precipitate a panic the last time I had
to do it.  (I don't know for certain, as the machine is far away in a
machine room, but some kind of abnormal shutdown occurred that
necessitated a fsck of all filesystems on reboot.)

So, is there any chance of getting "setstate" supported under RELENG_5
(which this machine runs), so that I can "gvinum setstate up <drive>" to
get geom_vinum to believe the drive is alive and hence not panic when I
then do a "gvinum start <some-mirrored-plex-marked-down>"?

(The minor irritation of the "FAILURE - WRITE_DMA timed out" becomes an
annoyance when it means I have to reboot to get the "failed" drive
recognised again.  Those errors in the ATA system never happened under
5.1; they seemed to creep in with 5.2 and have remained ever since.
Unfortunately, the way this machine has been assembled, I can't
"atacontrol detach" individual drives to try and get geom_vinum
[hopefully] to see them reappear that way.)

In other words, "setstate" support---even just limited to drives---would
be a big help!

Cheers,

Paul.
-- 
e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production
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