2.4.x and DAC960 issues

I have had problems using the DAC960 driver under any 2.4.x kernel (currently using 2.4.18). I have not experienced these problems under 2.2.x.

1. Under reasonably low loads the driver will hang. It is very reproducible when using the benchmark program "Bonnie." This problem is exacerbated when using the ext3 filing system, locking up almost immediately.

2. I am not sure if this is related, but I believe that it is. I see the message "spurious 8259A interrupt: IRQ7." Most of the examples of this that I have read about involve having APIC enabled. But, for me, this is not the case.

3. If I boot without appending the "noapic" option, the driver hangs after scanning the bus for cards, but before getting to configuring the card. This is minor. I can live with this workaround.

The machine is a Tyan S1836DLUAN-BX, dual PIII 600Mhz. The controller is a DAC1164P w/ Firmware Version: 5.08-0-87. The problem exists with prior versions of the firmware and either RAID 0 or RAID 5 setups. Kernels are compiled w/ egcs-2.91.66.

Please let me know if any additional information is needed. Any help debugging these problems would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

-Albert

[snip]

I am using a Mylex 170LP with no problem, running on a dual 550MHz MSI 6120S under quite a few 2.4.x kernels, lately 2.4.18 and 2.4.19pre5, all under reiserfs. The firmware is 6.00-15, carrying 6 9GB disks (5 RAID5 + 1 spare).

There have been NO lockups under any version of the kernel, not under multiple bonnie runs.

What is your interrupt breakdown? Could your machine be doing something naughty with the interrupts?

---MAV
Linguists Do It Cunningly
Marc A. Volovic [email protected]

This what /proc/interrupts says:
CPU0 CPU1

  0:    3874524          0          XT-PIC  timer
  1:      18836          0          XT-PIC  keyboard
  2:          0          0          XT-PIC  cascade
  4:          4          0          XT-PIC  serial
  5:      46479          0          XT-PIC  soundblaster
  8:     218807          0          XT-PIC  rtc
  9:     128424          0          XT-PIC  aic7xxx, aic7xxx
 10:      52035          0          XT-PIC  Mylex DAC1164P
 12:     342261          0          XT-PIC  PS/2 Mouse
 14:     209669          0          XT-PIC  eth0
 15:      44772          0          XT-PIC  eth1, usb-uhci
NMI:          0          0 
LOC:    3874766    3874768 
ERR:         16
MIS:          0

-Albert

I've forwarded your first message to Leonard (the driver author)... well probably get some feedback soon.

[snips]

Ouch, this does not look healthy. You're at 'noapic'? Seems so.

Mine is:
CPU0 CPU1

 17:         22         17   IO-APIC-level  BusLogic BT-958
 18:      83988      84319   IO-APIC-level  Mylex AcceleRAID 160

However, I can see no indication for misbehaviour. Let's take it off the list. Can you send me a driver startup dmesg?

---MAV
Linguists Do It Cunningly
Marc A. Volovic [email protected]