6.2-RELEASE amd64 system rebooting under heavy load with Areca ARC-1231ML

[Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC]

Hi

I have a new system I am building.

Tyan S5197 MB with Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4ghz, 4GB RAM
Areca ARC-1231ML raid card.  5 320gb disks in a RAID6 with 1 320gb  
disk hot spare plus two 750gb in a raid1 mirror.  Using the ARECA  
firmware, each raidset is subdivided into separate volumes that each  
appear to the OS as separate daN type disks.

I read through Google about various problems that the Areca driver  
had as well as on the Areca website FAQ (on FreeBSD)

I installed 6.2-RELEASE on this system.  Under heavy IO load the  
system reboots itself.  This happened both in trying to install the  
OS, and if I got that far, in trying to build cvsup tool or in  
building a new kernel.  The machine could sit there idle for hours  
but you startup a large build and usually withing a few minutes  or  
10 minutes it would reboot itself.  I tried installing the 6.2-STABLE  
snapshot (latest on in the downloads which is from June) but the  
whole system would lock up after a few minutes and I would get  
corruption on the console screen so I decided that was not a great  
plan.  I also tried the 7-CURRENT as a test but that would not stay  
out of the kernel debugger.

So I went back to 6.2-STABLE.  I installed it and then copied the  
areca kernel driver source  arcmsr.c/.h from the 6.2-STABLE snapshot  
from June (latest snapshot I could find) and used it to rebuild the  
kernel.  I was then able to build cvsup and do a cvsup  to the latest  
-RELEASE code and was a significant way through a buildworld when it  
happened again and rebooted itself.  So it appears the problem is not  
yet solved.

Is anyone out there running a form of 6.2 on an x64 type platform  
using an Areca controller?  What is the latest 6.x compatible driver  
source for the Areca?  I tried to copy the 7-CURRENT areca source  
back but it relies on the new CAM system and even if I added that  
option to my 6.2 there were a bunch of compilation errors that made  
it look like the 7.0-CURRENT IO or SCSI or whatever lower level it  
uses  system has changed.

Any help in figuring out how to get this up and running without these  
reboots under load would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Chad


---
Chad Leigh -- Shire.Net LLC
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chad at shire.net