DOH! ata_alloc_request failed!

[tracy yan]

Hello, List!

I'm running freebsd 6.1-release with a customized kernel on amd64 platform.
The motherboard is Tyan Thunder K8S S2882.  The board has built-in raid 
control, but I use atacontrol instead.  The following message will appear 
either when there is heavy disk I/O or when system is doing some daily check 
up ( for example, security check at 3:00am):

Aug 25 17:34:19 server kernel: DOH! ata_alloc_composite failed!
Aug 25 17:34:19 server kernel: FAILURE - out of memory in 
ata_raid_init_request
Aug 25 17:34:19 server kernel: g_vfs_done():ar0s1f[WRITE(offset=28373975040, 
length=16384)]error = 5
Aug 26 04:15:57 server kernel: DOH! ata_alloc_request failed!

When the error occurs, the system will crash.  The console is hangling, it 
shutdowns some  running application. However, when you ping the server ip 
address, it shows the system is still alive.  And monitor system shows me 
that "total process is in critical situation" ( mean too much process 
running at the same time).  In such case, I have to reboot the system.

While I was searching the mailing list.  I saw a few more people also 
encourtered this error.  ie, the thread 
httpd://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-amd64/2006-April/008047.html

I am wondering whether someone has figure out what is causing this error and 
the way to fix it.

Thanks

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