Re: smp problems on AlphaServer 4100
On Thu, Jan 26, 2006 at 10:47:22PM -0800, Bill MacAllister wrote:
> I probably would not be futzing around with this system at all if it was
> stable. Even though I can boot a 2.4.28 smp kernel and a 2.6.8 generic
> kernel, neither is stable. The system kernel panicked in the middle of the
> day again today. I have been fighting stability problems since I left the
> last official Red Hat release, 7.2.
>
> This system sits next to PWS 600 running OpenVMS. Last summer in
> frustration I swapped the disks and booted the 4100 as a VMS system and the
> PWS as a Linux system. The instability problems followed the software.
> The only thing that seemed to bring the VMS system down was when the power
> failed a couple of times. Not to say I haven't seen VMS systems accvio
> themselves into oblivion, but at least you can set them to restart
> themselves when they get lost in the weeds. It would be helpful if Linux
> would report the problem and then restart itself. Maybe this is a option I
> don't know about?
>
> Then I thought that I had figured the problem several months ago when I
> noticed that moving the old 8 gig disks on to a separate controller from
> the 70 and 140 gig disks seemed to work better. But, it only got better
> never really stable. Still kernel panics now and again.
>
> I have seen notes about qLogic problems. This system now has two qLogic
> controllers in it. I don't have log files or debugging output it does seem
> like this is a qLogic problem. Currently the system seems to have problems
> when it gets busy. I thought that with 2.6 the driver was supposed to be
> supported again.
>
> So, what are the options for SRM visible PCI controllers? With a 2.4
> kernel I had boot problems with a TekRam controller I tried. Maybe I
> should try the TekRam again in 2.6?
>
> What other options are there? I thought maybe it would make sense to put
> an Adaptec controller in the system and put the bulk of the data out there
> with a minimal amount of the system on qLogic served disk. Or maybe an
> AlphaBIOS boot? It has been forever since I have looked at AlphaBIOS on
> these systems, but I remember that from AlphaBIOS you can see Adaptec
> controllers. If I tried that I would have to use MILO to boot, right? Is
> that reasonable to try?
>
> I certainly wish I had any experience at looking at driver level code. It
> is really frustrating to have such fine hardware, even if a bit dated, be
> unusable because of this one software problem when the rest of the system
> seems to work fine.
>
> Bill
>
>
Put an LSI logic/Symbios card in there - I believe a 53c875 will boot fine in that machine and it willl work a lot better
than those qlogic cards.
Mike
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