sata_mv important note

For sata_mv users, you should be aware of three things:

1) The Marvell driver is experimental, and not yet considered ready for production use. As Kconfig notes: HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL.

Rest assured that all problem reports are read, even if you don't receive a reply. After enough feedback is received, the exact problem becomes more clear.

Quoted 4 lines · Jeff Garzik

For sata_mv users, you should be aware of three things:

1) The Marvell driver is experimental, and not yet considered ready for production use. As Kconfig notes: HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL.

Right, understood.

Quoted 7 lines · Sebastian Kuzminsky

Quoted 4 lines · Jeff Garzik

For sata_mv users, you should be aware of three things:

1) The Marvell driver is experimental, and not yet considered ready for production use. As Kconfig notes: HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL.

Right, understood.

I'm using:

03:03.0 SCSI storage controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. MV88SX6041=20 4-port SATA II PCI-X Controller (rev 07)

but with http://www.keffective.com/mvsata/FC3/mvSata-3.4.2a-patched.tbz driver and it works nicely (+ 2.8GHz Xeon HT, smp kernel). I was quite suprised to see that there are no problems with it in typical usage (while I'm sure that this driver is far away from kernel standards).

I'm using:

0000:02:01.0 IDE interface: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. MV88SX6081 8-port SATA II PCI-X Controller (rev 09)

I'm running the stock 2.6.15 kernel & the in-kernel driver. I have four disks on this controller. The controller and disks seem perfectly stable, I've been running four parallel "badblocks -n" processes (one on each disk) for almost 5 days now. Using the disks as PVs in LVM works fine, and building a RAID-6 out of them also works fine.

But when I build a RAID-6 out of them, and use the array as a PV for LVM, the system locks up within seconds (no errors, no sysrq, no CapsLock-blinky, no network-pingy). This behavior is perfectly repeatable.

The problem goes away and everything works if I turn on all the debugging options in the kernel config (but I dont get any debug output from the kernel).

Arkadiusz, if possible, please see if you can replicate my hang.

Quoted 11 lines · Arkadiusz Miskiewicz

Quoted 7 lines · Sebastian Kuzminsky

Quoted 4 lines · Jeff Garzik

For sata_mv users, you should be aware of three things:

1) The Marvell driver is experimental, and not yet considered ready for production use. As Kconfig notes: HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL.

Right, understood.

I'm using:

Quoted 7 lines

03:03.0 SCSI storage controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. MV88SX6041=20 4-port SATA II PCI-X Controller (rev 07)

but with http://www.keffective.com/mvsata/FC3/mvSata-3.4.2a-patched.tbz driver and it works nicely (+ 2.8GHz Xeon HT, smp kernel). I was quite suprised to see that there are no problems with it in typical usage (while I'm sure that this driver is far away from kernel standards).

I'm using:

0000:02:01.0 IDE interface: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. MV88SX6081 8-port SATA II PCI-X Controller (rev 09)

I'm running the stock 2.6.15 kernel & the in-kernel driver. I have four disks on this controller. The controller and disks seem perfectly stable, I've been running four parallel "badblocks -n" processes (one on each disk) for almost 5 days now. Using the disks as PVs in LVM works fine, and building a RAID-6 out of them also works fine.

But when I build a RAID-6 out of them, and use the array as a PV for LVM, the system locks up within seconds (no errors, no sysrq, no CapsLock-blinky, no network-pingy). This behavior is perfectly repeatable.

The problem goes away and everything works if I turn on all the debugging options in the kernel config (but I dont get any debug output from the kernel).

Quoted 8 lines · Sebastian Kuzminsky

0000:02:01.0 IDE interface: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. MV88SX6081 8-port SATA II PCI-X Controller (rev 09)

I'm running the stock 2.6.15 kernel & the in-kernel driver. I have four disks on this controller. The controller and disks seem perfectly stable, I've been running four parallel "badblocks -n" processes (one on each disk) for almost 5 days now. Using the disks as PVs in LVM works fine, and building a RAID-6 out of them also works fine.

Quoted 4 lines

But when I build a RAID-6 out of them, and use the array as a PV for LVM, the system locks up within seconds (no errors, no sysrq, no CapsLock-blinky, no network-pingy). This behavior is perfectly repeatable.

Have you tried using "nmi_watchdog=1" kernel parameter?

Can anyone recommend a 4xSATA (or more) controller on a PCI-X card that _is_ ready for production use? eSATA ports are prefered but not required. Support for hotplug, power management (spindown) and SMART is prefered but not required.

Quoted 5 lines · Sebastian Kuzminsky

Can anyone recommend a 4xSATA (or more) controller on a PCI-X card that _is_ ready for production use? eSATA ports are prefered but not required. Support for hotplug, power management (spindown) and SMART is prefered but not required.

The Pacific Digital QStor cards come in PCIX variants, and support SATA2. Hotplug et al is supported in the hardware, but not in the Libata driver. ATAPI is not supported at all.

Quoted 7 lines · Mark Lord

Quoted 4 lines · Sebastian Kuzminsky

Can anyone recommend a 4xSATA (or more) controller on a PCI-X card that _is_ ready for production use? eSATA ports are prefered but not required. Support for hotplug, power management (spindown) and SMART is prefered but not required.

Quoted 3 lines

The Pacific Digital QStor cards come in PCIX variants, and support SATA2. Hotplug et al is supported in the hardware, but not in the Libata driver. ATAPI is not supported at all.

Using which driver? (just curious)

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Quoted 3 lines

The Pacific Digital QStor cards come in PCIX variants, and support SATA2. Hotplug et al is supported in the hardware, but not in the Libata driver. ATAPI is not supported at all.

Using which driver? (just curious)

sata_qstor

Quoted 2 lines

sata_qstor

Bummer. I silently hoped it would be using ahci, but I will dream on ;-)

Quoted 4 lines · Erik Slagter

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sata_qstor

Bummer. I silently hoped it would be using ahci, but I will dream on ;-)

It has a UHCI interface rather than AHCI.

There is an alternative SCSI LLD for it that supports all of the goodies (native and legacy tagged queuing, RAID 0/1/10, hot ("live") insertion/removal, etc.. but it is probably a bit out of date now. Last updated a year ago. And not in the main tree.

Quoted 4 lines · Mark Lord

Quoted 2 lines · Erik Slagter

Quoted 1 line

sata_qstor

Bummer. I silently hoped it would be using ahci, but I will dream on ;-)

It has a UHCI interface rather than AHCI.

UHCI as in USB Universal Host Controller Interface?? or something else?

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sata_qstor

Bummer. I silently hoped it would be using ahci, but I will dream on ;-)

It has a UHCI interface rather than AHCI.

UHCI as in USB Universal Host Controller Interface?? or something else?

Something else. Full native SATA PCI-X.

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sata_qstor

Bummer. I silently hoped it would be using ahci, but I will dream on ;-)

It has a UHCI interface rather than AHCI.

There is an alternative SCSI LLD for it that supports all of the goodies (native and legacy tagged queuing, RAID 0/1/10, hot ("live") insertion/removal, etc.. but it is probably a bit out of date now. Last updated a year ago. And not in the main tree.