System hangs during heavy sequential write to mfi device

[Antony Mawer]

On Tue, Jun 29, 2010 at 4:09 AM, John Baldwin <jhb at freebsd.org> wrote:
> On Monday 28 June 2010 1:57:27 pm Ireneusz Pluta wrote:
>> John Baldwin pisze:
>> > On Monday 28 June 2010 12:00:06 pm Ireneusz Pluta wrote:
>> >
>> >> John Baldwin pisze:
>> >>
>> >>> On Friday 25 June 2010 4:59:57 pm Ireneusz Pluta wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>> John Baldwin pisze:
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>> Hmmm.  You might have a hardware issue.  OTOH, you can try seeing if
> you
>> >>>>>
>> > have
>> >
>> >>>>> a BIOS option to disable PCIE error logging.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>
>> >>>> is it one of them?:
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Assert NMI on SERR
>> >>>> Assert NMI on PERR
>> >>>>
>> >>>> (pdf page 109 of: ->
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >
> http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/s5520hc/sb/e39529013_s5520hc_s5500hcv_s5520hct_tps_r1_9.pdf)
>> >
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>> Well, that will turn off the NMIs.  Not sure if it will affect the event
>> >>> logging, but it is worth a shot.
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >> Per BIOS setup documentation:
>> >>
>> >> On SERR, generate an NMI and log an error.
>> >> Note: [Enabled] must be selected for the Assert NMI
>> >> on PERR setup option to be visible.
>> >>
>> >> and:
>> >>
>> >> On PERR, generate an NMI and log an error.
>> >> Note: This option is only active if the Assert NMI on
>> >> SERR option is [Enabled] selected.
>> >>
>> >> However, disabling them did not change anything.
>> >>
>> >
>> > Is it still logging errors and sending NMIs with them disabled?
>> >
>> with the options I mentioned disabled. They do not have to be the only
>> sources of NMIs, do they?
>
> Well, they should be the sources of the log messages you found in your system
> event log.  There is a good chance that you have some broken hardware
> somewhere, I'm not sure how easy it is for you to debug that via swapping out
> components, but the RAID controller is the first thing I would try.

You might want to try a BIOS update to see if it resolves these
problems ... I seem to remember some mention of these sorts of errors
in the change log of one of the recent Intel server board BIOSes.

-- Antony