MegaRaid 2m Giant Locked-up

[Robert keyes]

On Fri, 4 Feb 2005, Scott Long wrote:

> Robert keyes wrote:
>
> > I've recently acquired an HP NetServer LP1000r, 2ith 2 Pentium IIIs at
> > 1266 mhz with 2GB of PC133 ram, and a NetRaid 2M RAID controller, with 2
> > 18GB HP 15k SCSI drives.
> >
> > Upon trying to install FreeBSD 5.3-Release, I've had problems with the
> > NetRaid. I get two Giant Loced messages, the first from ohci0, and the
> > second from amr0 and then the system hangs:
> >
> > amr0: <LSILogic MegaRAID> mem 0xf000000 -0x7ffffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on
> > pci3
> >
> > amr0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
>
> This is just an informational message that the driver is using old the
> SMP locking mechanism instead of it's own.  It does not indicate a bug
> or a problem.  This has been addressed recently and can be tested by
> updating your system.

OK. so I guess it's whatever happens AFTER the Giant-Lock that is the
problem.


> >
> > I have run HP's diagnostics utility on the machne, and it passed all
> > tests. I have removed the NetRaid card and the drives are detected and
> > fdisk shows them to still be formatted with the prior user's NTFS ;)
> > So the problem is the netraid driver.
> >
> > When running the diagnostics, I noticed it reported the NetRaid-2m at
> > memory base 0xf0000008 and irq 9 - so how is FreeBSD coming up with IRQ
> > 16? Or am I mixing apples and oranges?
>
> The diagnostics run the interrupt controllers in legacy mode.  There is
> nothing to worry about here.

OK

> Have you actually installing and running FreeBSD despite these messages?
>

No. Before I toss the RAID card, I wanted to see if I could use it.
Immediately after the Giant Lock message (even in verbose logging mode)
the system freezes hard (i.e. caps lock fails to toggle the keyboard LED).

I have tried some desperate measured, such as reducing ram to 1gb and
running a single processor, with the same results.

Interestingly, neither Debian nor Red Hat can find the drives, but they
don't crash.

I have flashed the BIOS on the MegaRaid to the latest available from the
HP website. That made no change to the result.

I am about to disable IDE and try to install from floppy. It's the last,
best desperate move I can make.