Fw: Re: Fw: Re: Fw: medley raid problem

James Olson big_spender12 at lycos.com
Fri Nov 4 21:14:38 UTC 2005


 Hi Heinz,
Ok I emailed the sil metadata for my 3 older drives to mauelshagen at redhat.com per your instructions let me know if you don't receive it.  Thanks for looking into this.
   -James
----- Original Message -----
From: "Heinz Mauelshagen" <mauelshagen at redhat.com>
To: "ATARAID (eg, Promise Fasttrak,  Highpoint 370) related discussions" <ataraid-list at redhat.com>
Subject: Re: Fw: Re: Fw: medley raid problem
Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 12:31:37 +0100

> 
> 
> James,
> 
> it works but it breaks my design goal to avoid hw ties in dmraid code :(
> 
> Can you send me your metadata dd'ed into files hd[efg].dat, so that I can try
> figure another PCI* dependency avoiding approach ?
> 
> Thanks,
> Heinz
> 
> On Sun, Oct 30, 2005 at 01:15:58AM -0500, James Olson wrote:
> >  Hi Molle,
> > Thanks for your help.  Anyway, the hpa message turned out to be a red herring.  The problem 
> > was actually in the detection of the magic number in the metadata.  From sil.c the magic 
> > number is defined:
> > #define	SIL_MAGIC	0x2F000000
> > and on my 3 drives I read:
> > magic: 	hdf		0x0F000000 disk_number: 2
> > magic: 	hdg		0x2F000000 disk_number: 1
> > magic: 	hde		0x0B000000 disk_number: 0
> >
> > so it is finding the metadata but the routine:
> > return sil->magic == SIL_MAGIC && sil->disk_number < 8;
> > fails for hdf and hde.
> >
> > I wasn't sure how to fix the magic number detection so I wrote a patch to use the PCI vendor 
> > and product ID instead, like they do in the working ataraid, medley 2.4 kernel modules, and it 
> > works! :
> >
> > --- dmraid.orig/dmraid/1.0.0.rc9/lib/format/ataraid/sil.c	2005-09-22 06:09:02.000000000 -0700
> > +++ dmraid/1.0.0.rc9/lib/format/ataraid/sil.c	2005-10-29 22:50:32.000000000 -0700
> > @@ -128,7 +128,11 @@
> >
> >  static int is_sil(struct sil *sil)
> >  {
> > -	return sil->magic == SIL_MAGIC && sil->disk_number < 8;
> > +#define SIL_680_VENDOR_ID   0x1095
> > +#define SIL_680_PRODUCT_ID  0x0680
> > +	if ((sil->vendor_id == SIL_680_VENDOR_ID) && (sil->product_id == SIL_680_PRODUCT_ID))
> > +	return 1;
> > +	else return 0;
> >  }
> >
> >  static int sil_valid(struct lib_context *lc, struct dev_info *di,
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Molle Bestefich" <molle.bestefich at gmail.com>
> > To: "ATARAID (eg, Promise Fasttrak,  Highpoint 370) related discussions" 
> > <ataraid-list at redhat.com>
> > Subject: Re: Fw: Re: Fw: medley raid problem
> > Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2005 22:54:28 +0200
> >
> > > > James Olson wrote:
> > > > 2.4 kernel dmesg log:
> > > > hde: 6835952 sectors (3500 MB), CHS=6781/16/63, UDMA(33)
> > > > hdf: 6346368 sectors (3249 MB) w/96KiB Cache, CHS=6296/16/63, DMA
> > > > hdg: host protected area => 1
> > > > hdg: 6346368 sectors (3249 MB) w/256KiB Cache, CHS=6296/16/63, UDMA(33)
> > > > Too bad it doesn't tell you how large the HPA is, otherwise you could
> > > subtract that from the total size and look for metadata at the
> > > resulting sector...
> > > > > Here is the 2.6 log:
> > > > hde: FUJITSU MPA3035ATU, ATA DISK drive
> > > > hdf: IBM-DAQA-33240, ATA DISK drive
> > > > hdg: WDC AC23200L, ATA DISK drive
> > > > hde: 6835952 sectors (3500 MB), CHS=6781/16/63, UDMA(33)
> > > > hdf: 6346368 sectors (3249 MB) w/96KiB Cache, CHS=6296/16/63, DMA
> > > > hdg: 6346368 sectors (3249 MB) w/256KiB Cache, CHS=6296/16/63, UDMA(33)
> > > > I've seen 2.6 versions that do tell about HPA areas, I find it suspect
> > > that yours doesn't.
> > > Perhaps it's a bug (but it really does disable the HPA), perhaps there
> > > really is no HPA or perhaps the information has been intentionally
> > > removed from newer 2.6 kernels.
> > > > Could you compare the number of sectors that Linux tells you above to
> > > the number reported by your BIOS?
> > > > Just to get you up to speed on HPA:
> > > There was some discussion on linux-kernel, and the powers that be
> > > (Alan Cox) does not want to change the kernel's current faulty
> > > behaviour of automatically disabling the HPA, since that would break
> > > things for the few people that has partitions which span the HPA if
> > > they upgrade the kernel and do not manually enable the "HPA disable"
> > > thing.  Most of those people supposedly have BIOSs where they can
> > > disable HPA the proper way (the ThinkPad users do, at least), but that
> > > argument didn't seem to stick.
> > > > The only way forward right now that would pass the Cox barrier is a
> > > patch that change all the partition detection code to:
> > >   * Know about HPA/non-HPA size of physical devices.
> > >   * Detect partitions that are out-of-bounds of the non-HPA size.
> > >   * Call IDE code to disable HPA when such partitions are found.
> > > > Or patches that:
> > >   * Change all user code to be aware of HPA versus non-HPA IDE disks.
> > > > Both seems overly complex solutions compared to:
> > >   * Fixing the kernel to behave itself and not disable HPA.
> > >   * Provide a kernel command line flag or configuration option for
> > > those who need to disable HPA manually because they have a horrible
> > > BIOS.
> > > > But that's how things are right now.
> > > > > Also there is some question of the drive geometry between the different kernels.
> > > > The hdparm -g outputs differ.
> > > > Maybe 2.4 does not disable HPA?
> > > 2.6 does (my best guess is that it does so because some IDE developer
> > > had a laptop which didn't allow him to disable HPA).
> > > > Seems odd though, since the two logs you've given indicate that both
> > > kernels see the same number of sectors.  What sector count do you get
> > > if you run fdisk on the two kernels?
> > > > Blah blah.  Sorry for the lengthy mail.
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > Ataraid-list mailing list
> > > Ataraid-list at redhat.com
> > > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/ataraid-list
> >
> >
> > -- _______________________________________________
> >
> > Search for businesses by name, location, or phone number.  -Lycos Yellow Pages
> >
> > http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Ataraid-list mailing list
> > Ataraid-list at redhat.com
> > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/ataraid-list
> 
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
> 
> Heinz Mauelshagen                                 Red Hat GmbH
> Consulting Development Engineer                   Am Sonnenhang 11
> Cluster and Storage Development                   56242 Marienrachdorf
>                                                    Germany
> Mauelshagen at RedHat.com                            +49 2626 141200
>                                                         FAX 924446
> =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Ataraid-list mailing list
> Ataraid-list at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/ataraid-list


-- 
_______________________________________________

Search for businesses by name, location, or phone number.  -Lycos Yellow Pages

http://r.lycos.com/r/yp_emailfooter/http://yellowpages.lycos.com/default.asp?SRC=lycos10





More information about the Ataraid-list mailing list