CentOS - Jun 2007 - Troubles with CentOS5 and 3ware RAID controller

Folks,

Since approx. a half year I have run two servers with CentOS4, all was
running very stable.

Then I upgraded to CentOS5 (fresh install). The servers are running
quite unstable since the upgrade. The system is freezing after short uptime.

I suspect the driver for the 3ware controller, because I got such error
messages:

3w-xxxx: scsi0: Character ioctl (0x1f) timed out, resetting card.
3w-xxxx: scsi0: Character ioctl (0x1f) timed out, resetting card.
3w-xxxx: scsi0: Character ioctl (0x1f) timed out, resetting card.

(lots of repeats of this messages)

sd 0:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
sd 0:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
sd 0:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
EXT3-fs error (device sda6): ext3_find_entry: reading directory #2 offset 0
sd 0:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
sd 0:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
sd 0:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device

After some time (few hours) the systems are completely freezing, no
display of errors on the console or logs

Here some relevant data of my system:

00:0a.0 RAID bus controller: 3ware Inc 7xxx/8xxx-series PATA/SATA-RAID
(rev 01)
        Subsystem: 3ware Inc 7xxx/8xxx-series PATA/SATA-RAID
        Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop-
ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
        Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort-
<TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
        Latency: 32 (2250ns min), Cache Line Size: 32 bytes
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 185
        Region 0: I/O ports at e100 [size=16]
        Region 1: Memory at fa824000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16]
        Region 2: Memory at fa000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8M]
        [virtual] Expansion ROM at 80060000 [disabled] [size=64K]
        Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 1
                Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1+ D2- AuxCurrent=0mA
PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
                Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-

Kernel: 2.6.18-8.1.6.el5

It cannot be a 3ware hardware error, because the controller was
exchanged with the same results afterwards.

Any hints are very welcome.

Thanks,

Luc

On Tuesday 26 June 2007, Luc de Louw wrote:
> Folks,
>
> Since approx. a half year I have run two servers with CentOS4, all was
> running very stable.
>
> Then I upgraded to CentOS5 (fresh install). The servers are running
> quite unstable since the upgrade. The system is freezing after short
> uptime.
>
> I suspect the driver for the 3ware controller, because I got such error
> messages:
>
> 3w-xxxx: scsi0: Character ioctl (0x1f) timed out, resetting card.
...
> Any hints are very welcome.
Are you using the centos-5 3ware driver or the recommended one from 3wares 
site? ...either way you may want to try the other one. Maybe check with 3ware 
support and see which driver they recommend for your combo of controller and 
OS.

/Peter
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