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Please help if u can.

DISCUSSION John Scarpa 5 participants 9 messages Feb 21, 2007 – Feb 26, 2007 SCSI

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#0 lore raw

Dear Luben,

I am trying to compile the aic94xx for my aic9410 directly into my kernel (fc5_64bit-2.6.20)... Is this possible or must it be loaded as a module? I am really not wanting to add modular support to my nice neat monolithic kernel.. :-( I've been searching for ever now and tried everything i could to no avail..

--->Log
aic94xx: Adaptec aic94xx SAS/SATA driver version 1.0.2 loaded
aic94xx: found Adaptec AIC-9410W SAS/SATA Host Adapter, device 0000:04:02.0 scsi0 : aic94xx
aic94xx: Failed to load sequencer firmware file aic94xx-seq.fw, error -2
aic94xx: couldn't init seqs for 0000:04:02.0
aic94xx: couldn't init the chip

--->Specs
FC5_64bit 2.6.20
Supermicro 6025B-3 Server Model

Thank you for any help! btw this is the first time i ever wrote a maintainer for help... my pride is definitely hurting right now...

Best wishes,
John Scarpa

#1 lore raw
Quoted 16 lines · John Scarpa

Dear Luben,

I am trying to compile the aic94xx for my aic9410 directly into my kernel (fc5_64bit-2.6.20)... Is this possible or must it be loaded as a module? I am really not wanting to add modular support to my nice neat monolithic kernel.. :-( I've been searching for ever now and tried everything i could to no avail..

--->Log
aic94xx: Adaptec aic94xx SAS/SATA driver version 1.0.2 loaded
aic94xx: found Adaptec AIC-9410W SAS/SATA Host Adapter, device 0000:04:02.0 scsi0 : aic94xx
aic94xx: Failed to load sequencer firmware file aic94xx-seq.fw, error -2
aic94xx: couldn't init seqs for 0000:04:02.0
aic94xx: couldn't init the chip

Quoted 8 lines

--->Specs
FC5_64bit 2.6.20
Supermicro 6025B-3 Server Model

Thank you for any help! btw this is the first time i ever wrote a maintainer for help... my pride is definitely hurting right now...

John,
You have touched a rather sore point. The source files in the aic94xx driver found in lk 2.6.20 start like this:

/*
* Aic94xx SAS/SATA driver header file.
*
* Copyright (C) 2005 Adaptec, Inc. All rights reserved.
* Copyright (C) 2005 Luben Tuikov <[email protected]> *
* This file is licensed under GPLv2.

It would be reasonable to assume that Luben is the maintainer of this code although the MAINTAINERS file has no entry for the aic94xx driver.

This code was effectively removed from Luben's control about 18 months ago and has passed through several sets of hands since then. None of the people concerned want to identify themselves in the source or explain what has been done in writing. Why?

The existing copyright notices should remain but what about the massive changes to that driver in 2006? Where is the indication of whom John should contact? Perhaps something like:
"For maintenance of this driver contact
[email protected]"

FYI John, Luben maintains his own version of the aic94xx and that version holds the sequencer firmware in a binary blob within the driver. Due to kernel policy, that blob was moved to separate file by someone else. The error that you are reporting suggests that the firmware file for the aic94xx cannot be found. On my system the file that you may be missing looks like this:

# ls -l /lib/firmware/aic94xx-seq.fw
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 22622 Aug 29 17:36 /lib/firmware/aic94xx-seq.fw

Doug Gilbert

#2 lore raw
Quoted 9 lines · Douglas Gilbert

It would be reasonable to assume that Luben is the maintainer of this code although the MAINTAINERS file has no entry for the aic94xx driver.

This code was effectively removed from Luben's control about 18 months ago and has passed through several sets of hands since then. None of the people concerned want to identify themselves in the source or explain what has been done in writing. Why?

Laziness, in my case. I suppose it would be useful to document the fact that I've made changes to libsas/aic94xx. Though the "what has been done" part ... I was hoping the commit messages would suffice.

Quoted 7 lines

The existing copyright notices should remain but what about the massive changes to that driver in 2006? Where is the indication of whom John should contact?

Perhaps something like:
"For maintenance of this driver contact
[email protected]"

Alexis can answer this part.

Quoted 9 lines

FYI John, Luben maintains his own version of the aic94xx and that version holds the sequencer firmware in a binary blob within the driver. Due to kernel policy, that blob was moved to separate file by someone else. The error that you are reporting suggests that the firmware file for the aic94xx cannot be found. On my system the file that you may be missing looks like this:

# ls -l /lib/firmware/aic94xx-seq.fw
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 22622 Aug 29 17:36 /lib/firmware/aic94xx-seq.fw

http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/jejb/aic94xx-seq.fw

--D

#3 lore raw

First a very big thanks to all of u! I have been suffering a serious lack of sleep problem lately.. i should have noticed that by whom has been submitting the past 500 fixes and updates!

Quick question, is the driver still consider experimental?? the guys i work with say it doesn't support sata drives and it's still experimental so don't use it. And i can't find anything on the state of this driver.

PS. I should have said i dropped that aic94xx-seq.fw in /lib,/lib/firmware,/lib64,/lib64/firmware (still have yet to get this sucker to work)

Thanks much again though for your time!!!

John

Quoted 46 lines · Darrick J. Wong
Quoted 10 lines · Douglas Gilbert

It would be reasonable to assume that Luben is the maintainer of this code although the MAINTAINERS file has no entry for the aic94xx driver.

This code was effectively removed from Luben's control about 18 months ago and has passed through several sets of hands since then. None of the people concerned want to identify themselves in the source or explain what has been done in writing. Why?

Laziness, in my case. I suppose it would be useful to document the fact that I've made changes to libsas/aic94xx. Though the "what has been done" part ... I was hoping the commit messages would suffice.

Quoted 8 lines

The existing copyright notices should remain but what about the massive changes to that driver in 2006? Where is the indication of whom John should contact?

Perhaps something like:
"For maintenance of this driver contact
[email protected]"

Alexis can answer this part.

Quoted 10 lines

FYI John, Luben maintains his own version of the aic94xx and that version holds the sequencer firmware in a binary blob within the driver. Due to kernel policy, that blob was moved to separate file by someone else. The error that you are reporting suggests that the firmware file for the aic94xx cannot be found. On my system the file that you may be missing looks like this:

# ls -l /lib/firmware/aic94xx-seq.fw
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 22622 Aug 29 17:36 /lib/firmware/aic94xx-seq.fw

http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/jejb/aic94xx-seq.fw

--D

#4 lore raw
Quoted 5 lines · John Scarpa

First a very big thanks to all of u! I have been suffering a serious lack of sleep problem lately.. i should have noticed that by whom has been submitting the past 500 fixes and updates!

Quick question, is the driver still consider experimental??

Very much so. The SAS bits are fairly stable nowadays, but the rest is still YMWV. :)

Quoted 2 lines

the guys i
work with say it doesn't support sata drives and it's still experimental

SATA support is under development. Patches exist in the git tree here:
http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/jejb/aic94xx-sas-2.6.git;a=summary

Quoted 5 lines

so don't use it. And i can't find anything on the state of this driver.

PS. I should have said i dropped that aic94xx-seq.fw in /lib,/lib/firmware,/lib64,/lib64/firmware (still have yet to get this sucker to work)

Yes, you need a udev that's new enough to know how to handle the firmware loading interface. Typically, udev will load firmware from /lib/firmware, though I suppose that depends on the distribution. Not sure if RH/Fedora support fw loading, newer Ubuntu-E and SuSE do...

--D

#5 lore raw
Quoted 28 lines · [email protected] wrote:
Quoted 6 lines · John Scarpa

First a very big thanks to all of u! I have been suffering a serious lack of sleep problem lately.. i should have noticed that by whom has been submitting the past 500 fixes and updates!

Quick question, is the driver still consider experimental??

Very much so. The SAS bits are fairly stable nowadays, but the rest is still YMWV. :)

Quoted 3 lines

the guys i
work with say it doesn't support sata drives and it's still experimental

SATA support is under development. Patches exist in the git tree here:
http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/jejb/aic94xx-sas-2.6.git;a=summary

Quoted 6 lines

so don't use it. And i can't find anything on the state of this driver.

PS. I should have said i dropped that aic94xx-seq.fw in /lib,/lib/firmware,/lib64,/lib64/firmware (still have yet to get this sucker to work)

Quoted 7 lines

Yes, you need a udev that's new enough to know how to handle the firmware loading interface. Typically, udev will load firmware from /lib/firmware, though I suppose that depends on the distribution. Not sure if RH/Fedora support fw loading, newer Ubuntu-E and SuSE do...

--D

Fedora Core 6 does. I just had to drop the firmware into /lib/firmware to get it loaded correctly. Unfortunately the drivers in the Fedora kernels do not have the SATA support merged into them. I looked at the aic94xx-sas-2.6.git tree, but it looks like things have been swapped around between scsi and libata since 2.6.19.1 (the latest fc6 update kernel). If anyone has versions of the SATA support patches that apply on top of a Fedora kernel, could you please direct me to them?

Aravind.

Quoted 5 lines

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#6 lore raw
In reply to Darrick J. Wong
Quoted 3 lines · --- "Darrick J. Wong

Laziness, in my case. I suppose it would be useful to document the fact that I've made changes to libsas/aic94xx. Though the "what has been done" part ... I was hoping the commit messages would suffice.

Doing a rev list on drivers/scsi/aic94xx shows only 25 commits.

But if you diff what was committed (2908d778ab3e244900c310974e1fc1c69066e450) with my code as posted to lkml and lsml -- huge differences.

That is, what was commited (2908d778ab3e244900c310974e1fc1c69066e450) is already changed code. So the commits and justifications of those changes and differences are nowhere to be found.

Note that the driver as posted by me to lkml and lsml back in Sept 2005 was fully functional. From functionality point of new, no changes were necessary.

Quoted 28 lines
Quoted 7 lines

The existing copyright notices should remain but what about the massive changes to that driver in 2006? Where is the indication of whom John should contact?

Perhaps something like:
"For maintenance of this driver contact
[email protected]"

Alexis can answer this part.

Quoted 9 lines

FYI John, Luben maintains his own version of the aic94xx and that version holds the sequencer firmware in a binary blob within the driver. Due to kernel policy, that blob was moved to separate file by someone else. The error that you are reporting suggests that the firmware file for the aic94xx cannot be found. On my system the file that you may be missing looks like this:

# ls -l /lib/firmware/aic94xx-seq.fw
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 22622 Aug 29 17:36 /lib/firmware/aic94xx-seq.fw

http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/jejb/aic94xx-seq.fw

--D
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#7 lore raw
In reply to Douglas Gilbert
Quoted 2 lines · --- Douglas Gilbert

This code was effectively removed from Luben's control about 18 months ago and has passed through several sets

Or rather, it was "forked off" of my main development tree. I guess, bottomley felt more comfortable with controlling it, that way.

Quoted 2 lines

FYI John, Luben maintains his own version of the aic94xx and that version holds the sequencer firmware

Yep, I kept on development in the main git tree, i.e. my own.

I don't know all of them, (since they don't tell me), but I do know of several products, and maybe a distro which is using the driver as I maintain it, for stability reasons.

Luben

#8 lore raw
In reply to John Scarpa
Quoted 7 lines · --- John Scarpa

Dear Luben,

I am trying to compile the aic94xx for my aic9410 directly into my kernel (fc5_64bit-2.6.20)... Is this possible or must it be loaded as a module? I am really not wanting to add modular support to my nice neat monolithic kernel.. :-( I've been searching for ever now and tried everything i could to no avail..

Dear John,

The driver which you found in the kernel was forked off of my main development git tree, by bottomley, changed privately by him and then committed to the kernel. It is loosely maintained by him and linux-scsi.

The driver which I maintain keeps the FW code as u8[] in the source, implements the SAT standard, i.e. supports SATA devices, and "just works". As I mentioned, it is being used by product vendors who build on top of the aic94xx chip and as far as I know, by at least one distro, for stability reasons.

Depending on which version of the driver you use, you should forward questions to the appropriate party maintaining it.

Quoted 2 lines

Thank you for any help! btw this is the first time i ever wrote a maintainer for help... my pride is definitely hurting right now...

No worries, you just didn't know.

Best wishes,
Luben

Quoted 9 lines

Best wishes,
John Scarpa

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