deadlock or bad disk ? RELENG_8

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 03:37:55PM -0000, Steven Hartland wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jeremy Chadwick"
> <freebsd at jdc.parodius.com>
> 
> >I apologise in advance if I have already reviewed your situation, but if
> >you could please provide full "smartctl -a" output for the disk, I can
> >review the data to see if anything looks out of place.
> >
> >An example: on some (not all) Western Digital "Green" disks, including
> >enterprise models, Attribute 193 showing an extremely large RAW_VALUE
> >(in the tens of thousands, if not more) indicates the drive is trying to
> >park its actuator arm/heads constantly.  The result: abysmal
> >performance.  One cannot key off of the firmware version as an indicator
> >(WD does not always increase/change the firmware string).  Some users
> >have been able to get WD to admit the problem + provide them a fixed
> >firmware.
> >
> >My point: looking at SMART attributes doesn't help unless you know
> >exactly what to look for, are familiar with all the quirks of drive
> >models, and basically act as an information sponge (subscribe to all
> >sorts of mailing lists, talk to users, help generic non-technical
> >end users out, etc.).  It takes up a lot of my time, but I try my best.
> >Sometimes I feel like my brain needs checksumming...
> 
> Thanks for the offer Jeremy unfortunately I'm in the same position Mike
> was as these disks are behind an areca which doesn't show raw values :(
> 
> I've raised this with their support as an issue with their areca-cli
> utility so hopefully they will fix. Alternatively maybe smartctl
> will
> add support for the areca under freebsd in the future.

Bummer.  Competitor's drivers make use of pass(4) and/or xpt(4), the
result being that you can see (and talk to directly) all the disks which
are on the RAID card.  No need for a CLI utility getting in the way,
etc..  It would benefit Areca if they added support for this to their
driver.

-- 
| 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 |