FreeBSD 4.11-Release IPS device issues

[David Sze]

At 09:13 AM 06/04/2005 +0100, Anthony Downer wrote this to All:
>Hello Folks,
>
>(I am afraid) we are using FreeBSD as the initial boot/hardware/disk
>configuration tool for our Standard Windows Server builds.
>
>We have a bootable CD that identifies hardware, partitions disk zero,
>copies the install files over and commences the Windows installation
>process.
>
>This is working fine on a large number of machines/scsi controllers, but
>the ServeRAID is causing some issues.
>I am attempting to use the 4.11-Release IPS driver on an IBM xSeries 342
>with a ServeRAID 4Lx RAID controller.
>(Controller BIOS/Firmware 7.10.18 - Two 18GB drives in a mirrored
>formation)
>
>Whilst we have successfully tested 5.3 with the IPS driver for this
>purpose we are getting some odd errors in 4.11
>(At this time it is not possible to migrate to 5.3 for our purposes)
>
>When copying a large number of files (the i386 folder) using cp from a
>mounted CD to a DOS formatted partition on ipsd0 we are getting the
>following errors:
>---cut here---
>devstat_end_transaction: HELP!! busy_count for ipsd0 is < 0 (-1)!
>panic: vwakeup: neg numoutput
>
>syncing disks... ips0: WARNING: command timeout. Adapter is in toaster
>mode, resetting to known state
>devstat_end_transaction: HELP!! busy_count for ipsd0 is < 0 (-1)!
>ips0: resetting adapter, this may take up to 5 minutes
>ips0: syncing config
>ips0: ERROR: unable to get a command! can't sync cache!
>ips0: adapter clear failed
>ips0: AIEE! adapter reset failed, giving up and going home! Have a nice
>day.
>---cut here---

I get the same panic on an IBM xSeries 346 with a ServeRAID-7k controller 
(Six 15K RPM 36GB drives, two as RAID1, four as RAID0).  The panic occurs 
at random points while sysinstall is copying distributions.  If I do a 
minimal install, that completes successfully, but then the same panic 
occurs while building a new kernel.

5.4-RC1 seems to work fine, but I'm in the same boat as you; my customer 
doesn't want to upgrade to RELENG_5 yet.

I'm going to look at backporting the -CURRENT ips driver to RELENG_4, I'll 
post patches (and a PR) if I'm successful.