Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 12 Oct 2006 11:51:20 -0400 | From | "David Dumas" <> | Subject | sx8 on x86-64 instability with kernels >= 2.6.16 |
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I have a dual opteron system with an sx8, and have observed repeatable sx8 failures under x86-64 linux 2.6.16 and later. The problems are not observed on x86-64 kernels 2.6.15 and earlier, nor on _any_ i386 kernel.
I first noticed the problem when trying to build a md RAID on the sx8. The resync always stops after < 2 seconds (at different points, but always early). Stats in /proc/mdstat continue to update, but show no progress, and mdadm --stop causes a soft lockup. Note that building a RAID consisting of disks on the onboard SATA controller works fine.
The problem is not specific to md however. While a single instance of bonnie++ typically succeeds, running two simultaneous instances on different disks connected to the sx8 always results in one of them freezing in disk wait. Sometimes a soft lockup occurs. I have never observed any error messages in syslog or on the console.
The dependence of the problem on specific kernel versions and the x86-64 architecture seems to rule out hardware issues (though I tried replacing cables, reseating card, etc.).
As for kernel configuration, I have tried both debian stock amd64 kernels and a custom kernel configured as close to the working 2.6.15 kernel as possible. The problem is the same in each case. I always keep the sx8 "max_queue" parameter at the safe value of 1, so this is not related to the instability observed by the driver developer for larger queues.
This is especially perplexing since the sx8 driver was only subject to trivial patches in the 2.6.16 release:
[PATCH] md: remove slashes from disk names when creation dev names in sysfs [PATCH] mutex subsystem, semaphore to completion: SX8
Perhaps a seemingly unrelated patch affects the sx8 driver, but only on x86-64? And advice or suggestions would be appreciated. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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