Compaq Proliant 8500 issue with Integrated SMART Array RAIDController (ida)

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a Compaq Proliant 8500 with the integrated SMART Array RAID
> controller.  I recall seeing "Symbios" and "ARM" on a chip on the
> center of the PCI module
> must be the
> RAID controller.  I
> used to have extreme problems even getting the system to boot
> up until I
> used the SmartStart
> CD and disabled the "Array Accelerator" for my one and only RAID1+0
> Container.  (Before doing this) I would get numerous
> ida0: soft write error and if the system did manage to boot
> up, a process
> might read the disk, and
> forever be stuck in some kernel routine between userland and
> the disk that
> gets a block or whatever.
> Now, I only get an occasional "ida0: soft read/write error" which
> occasionally causes a 15 or so second delay.  The "Array
> Accelerator" for
> the Integrated SMART array controller is 8MB of read-only cache.
> Other SMART Array models like the 4200 have battery backed up cache
> that can be user-separated between write and read cache.
>
> I'm wondering if anybody has ever seen the problem mentioned above.
>
> I would hate to have to replace the whole
> PCI module because of some bad controller ram since that darn thing is
> integrated, and would make useless the
> internal bays if another raid card was added.  As a note, the contacts
> between the hard drive and the drive module
> have been cleaned out multiple times for all the drives in the
> array.  The
> connection between the drive module and
> the back of the computer is sturdy and clean.  There are only
> TWO cables in
> this entire system that I know of, and one
> is for the IDE CDROM, and one is for the floppy.  So, cabling
> cannot be a
> problem.  I also have two working PSUs that
> each have a 120V line going into it, so I doubt it's a lack of
> power.  Even
> though 220V is recommended for both of them,
> it works fine with even just one 120V line.
>
> I asked the HP/Compaq forum and they weren't able to give me
> much more of an
> answer than "check the cabling" and "blow
> off the dust" which I found extremely irritating because the
> data is carried
> on copper wires that resemble the pins found
> on an IDE hard drive or floppy, not your standard "cabling."  I might
> ultimately be wrong...but I doubt it.
>

You should ask Windows questions in a Windows forum.  Oh, you aren't
running
Windows on this system?  Must be FreeBSD 2.2 then, right?

Ted