am2 MBs - 4g + SCSI wipes out root partition

David Peall david at esn.org.za
Sun Oct 12 22:39:05 PDT 2008


> aac(4) - not affected
> aha(4) - unknown
> ahb(4) - unknown
> ahc(4) - affected
> ahd(4) - unknown; no one answered the OP's question in the thread
> asr(4) - unknown
> ips(4) - unknown
> mpt(4) - not affected
> mfi(4) - unknown
> sym(4) - unknown

I'm using amd64 with 8Gb RAM with the following:
mfi0: <Dell PERC 6> port 0xec00-0xecff mem
0xfc480000-0xfc4bffff,0xfc440000-0xfc47ffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci1
mfi0: Megaraid SAS driver Ver 2.00
mfi0: 4914 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware initialization started
(PCI ID 0060/1000/1f0c/1028)
mfi0: 4915 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Firmware version 1.11.52-0349
mfi0: 4917 (boot + 3s/0x0020/info) - Package version 6.0.1-0080

No problems.

--
David Peall :: IT Manager
e-Schools' Network :: http://www.esn.org.za/
Phone +27 (021) 674-9140


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-stable at freebsd.org [mailto:owner-freebsd-
> stable at freebsd.org] On Behalf Of Jeremy Chadwick
> Sent: 11 October 2008 06:53 PM
> To: Adam McDougall
> Cc: freebsd-stable at freebsd.org; freebsd-amd64 at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: am2 MBs - 4g + SCSI wipes out root partition
> 
> On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 12:26:29PM -0400, Adam McDougall wrote:
> > Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
> >> On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 04:45:29PM +0200, Gary Jennejohn wrote:
> >>> On Sat, 11 Oct 2008 03:13:16 -0700
> >>> Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu at FreeBSD.org> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> On Sat, Oct 11, 2008 at 11:30:57AM +0200, Gary Jennejohn wrote:
> >>>>> On Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:29:37 -0300
> >>>>> JoaoBR <joao at matik.com.br> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> I tried MBs as Asus, Abit and Gigabyte all same result
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Same hardware with SATA works perfect
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Same hardware with scsi up to 3.5Gigs installed works perfect
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> what calls my attention that all this MBs do not have the
> >>>>>> memroy hole remapping feature so the complete 4gigs are
> >>>>>> available what normally was not the case with amd64 Mbs for the
> >>>>>> Athlon 64 CPUs
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> some has an opinion if this is a freebsd issue or MB falure or
> >>>>>> scsi drv problem?
> >>>>>>
> >>>>> It's a driver problem.  If you want to use SCSI then you'll have
to
> limit
> >>>>> memory to 3.5 GB.
> >>>> What you're saying is that Adaptec and LSI Logic SCSI controllers
behave
> >>>> badly (and can cause data loss) on amd64 systems which contain
more than
> >>>> 3.5GB of RAM.  This is a very big claim.
> >>>>
> >>>> Have you talked to Scott Long about this?
> >>>>
> >>>> Please expand on this, and provide evidence or references.  I
need to
> >>>> document this in my Wiki if it is indeed true.
> >>>>
> >>> See the freebsd-scsi thread with Subject "data corruption with ahc
driver
> >>> and 4GB of memory using a FBSD-8 64-bit installation?" from Wed,
30 Jan
> >>> 2008.
> >>>
> >>> This was for ahc, but the bit-rot which Scott mentions in his
reply might
> >>> also apply to the LSI Logic controllers.
> >>>
> >>> Basically the driver doesn't correctly handle DMA above 4GB.
Since the
> PCI
> >>> hole gets mapped above 4GB it causes problems.  the (S)ATA drivers
don't
> seem
> >>> to have this problem.
> >>
> >> Thank you -- this is the exact information I was looking for.
> >>
> >> I will update my Wiki page to reflect this quite major problem.
> >>
> >
> > I am using some LSI (mpt driver) ultra4 (U320 scsi) and LSI SAS
> > controllers in FreeBSD 7.x amd64 with 20G of ram, and Adaptec (aac
> > driver) with a 5th generation RAID card with 8G of ram, both have no
> > such corruption problems.  Providing this as a counter-example just
to
> > document some evidence of which products seem to work fine.
> 
> Is your LSI SAS controller driven by mpt(4) or mfi(4)?
> 
> Let's break down what we know for sure at this point:
> 
> aac(4) - not affected
> aha(4) - unknown
> ahb(4) - unknown
> ahc(4) - affected
> ahd(4) - unknown; no one answered the OP's question in the thread
> asr(4) - unknown
> ips(4) - unknown
> mpt(4) - not affected
> mfi(4) - unknown
> sym(4) - unknown
> 
> Could the problem be specific to certain firmware revisions on the
> cards?
> 
> Also adding Scott Long to the CC list.
> 
> --
> | Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
> | Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
> | UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
> | Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
> 
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