Disappointed with version 6.0

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
>[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions at freebsd.org]On Behalf Of Peter
>Sent: Friday, March 10, 2006 8:58 PM
>To: freebsd-questions
>Subject: Disappointed with version 6.0
>
>
>I'm setting up a new server on 6.0 I've been planning for a long time
>and I am very disappointed with two critical issues.  My motherboard is
>the ASUS K8V-X SE that I chose because it was listed as compatible at
>the FreeBSD/amd64 Project:
>
>http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/amd64/motherboards.html
>

Peter,

  That's really a poor choice as a server board.  That is basically
a low-end desktop board.  VIA isn't known for making top of the
line chipsets.

  I don't know if you have a particular favorite of ASUS, but if your
selecting a motherboard to build a server around from ASUS's product
line you have to dig a bit.  ASUS has some server motherboards but
they bury them in their product linueup.  Some of the keys to look for
are the existence of RAID on the motherboard, or the name "Premium"
and stay away from any board marketed "for gamers" as a lot of ASUS
boards are.

  For example, a typical ASUS motherboard positioned for the server
market is the P5WD2-E Premium

>I wonder if going back to 5.4 might help?
>
>Onto the problems...
>
>1. I have 4 IDE drives:
>
>primary controller: Maxtor 40 GB hd (master) and LG cdrom (slave)
>secondary controller: Seagate Barracuda 200 GB hd (master) and Seagate
>Barracuda 300 GB (slave)
>
>Problem: The 300 GB drive is unusable.
>
>I set it up ok with sysinstall during the installation but the system
>will not boot properly if it has an entry in /etc/fstab.  I get many
>errors like:
>
>"ad3: WARNING - READ_DMA UDMA ICRC error (retrying request) LBA=63"
>

What happens if you set the 300GB as the master on that controller
and do not plug in the 200GB unit?

>I also get input/output error if I try to examine its label with
>disklabel.
>
>dmesg output is at the end of this post when I booted without fstab
>line.
>
>The strange thing is that the two drives on the secondary controller
>are so similar.  Same manufacturer, same product line, the speeds are
>the same.  Everything is the same except the size.  I ran dos-level
>diagnostics on it and no problems were found.
>
>2.  I can't use my USB ports!
>

What in God's name is a USB peripheral doing on a server?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, this is why you pay people
to build clones for you.  The motherboard manufacturers these days are
coming out with a huge variety of products, and you have to do a lot of
digging through their stuff to find the gems among the junk.

The professional white box builders out there deal with problems like
yours by returning the motherboard to their distributors and getting
a different model, and testing that.  Sometimes they will go through
4 -5 motherboard models before they find one they feel is a good one.
Then 6 months later the motherboard manufacturers discontinue that model
and they have to go through the same process again.  If you want to play
in that space you need to do it the same way they do.  If you don't have
the financial resources to do that, then you shouldn't be doing it.
Instead, find a local computer shop that you can pay a few hundred
bucks more than it would cost you to get all the little parts and pieces
separately, and who will warranty the thing.  It is well worth it.

>I get a line like this for each of my ports:
>

You are wasting time.  Return the motherboard and get another.  Repeat
the process until it works.

Ted