Ext3 users - Feb 2002 - Promise TX2 and ATARAID....... kjouirnald and kupdated seem to fight it out for reasourses

What is really puzzling me is that the ataraid device (/dev/ataraid/d0p1 mounted
as /bigdisk)
2x 123GB IBM Deskstar's is formated as ext2...top and ps etc... show a fight
between kjournald and kupdated
and all searches for kjournald or kupdated fights suggest ext3 issues... :-)

It's a RedHat 7.2,  2.4.7-10 custom kernal (I added in the Promise FastTrak
support and HIGH mem support
to break through the c800MB barrier to use the whole 1GB RAM).

Creates the array fine... I get a problem as soon as I attempt to populate it...
the box is a Athalon 1.4GHz and 1GB RAM, two other 60GB drives on IDE0 and IDE1

I get an almost total slowdown/shutdown and top shows the load going to 8 or
nine with noone
logged in and console only....

Behaviour only when accessing the ATARAID.

ext3 for / only everything else ext2

Has anyone any idea/seen this behaviour or got an 'out' ?

egards,

Dominic

Hi,

On Thu, Feb 07, 2002 at 07:00:40AM -0500, Baines, Dominic
wrote:
> What is really puzzling me is that the ataraid device (/dev/ataraid/d0p1
mounted as /bigdisk)
> 2x 123GB IBM Deskstar's is formated as ext2...top and ps etc... show a
fight between kjournald and kupdated
> and all searches for kjournald or kupdated fights suggest ext3 issues...
:-)
> 
> It's a RedHat 7.2,  2.4.7-10 custom kernal (I added in the Promise
FastTrak support and HIGH mem support
> to break through the c800MB barrier to use the whole 1GB RAM).
How/why did you customise the kernel?  The normal 2.4.7-10 already has
HIGHMEM enabled, and has Promise Fasttrak support.

What happens if you just use the current 2.4.9 errata kernels?  There
is an updated ataraid driver in those, supporting raid1.
> Creates the array fine... I get a problem as soon as I attempt to populate
it...
> the box is a Athalon 1.4GHz and 1GB RAM, two other 60GB drives on IDE0 and
IDE1
> 
> I get an almost total slowdown/shutdown and top shows the load going to 8
or nine with noone
> logged in and console only....
Definitely try the new kernel --- if the fasttrak driver you added
was failing to negotiate dma then you'd see serious slowdown when
trying to do intensive IO.

Cheers,
 Stephen

-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen C. Tweedie [mailto:sct@redhat.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 1:06 PM
To: Baines, Dominic
Cc: ext3-users@redhat.com
Subject: Re: Promise TX2 and ATARAID....... kjouirnald and kupdated seem
to fight it out for reasourses


Hi,

On Thu, Feb 07, 2002 at 07:00:40AM -0500, Baines, Dominic
wrote:
> What is really puzzling me is that the ataraid device (/dev/ataraid/d0p1
mounted as /bigdisk)
> 2x 123GB IBM Deskstar's is formated as ext2...top and ps etc... show a
fight between kjournald and kupdated
> and all searches for kjournald or kupdated fights suggest ext3 issues...
:-)
> 
> It's a RedHat 7.2,  2.4.7-10 custom kernal (I added in the Promise
FastTrak support and HIGH mem support
> to break through the c800MB barrier to use the whole 1GB RAM).
$How/why did you customise the kernel? 

Out of the box it only recognised c 850MB not the whole 1GB, and didn't see
the array at
all...... also dropped all the usual rubbish not needed... ISDN, Sound, routing
etc... made
the kernel smaller.

$The normal 2.4.7-10 already has HIGHMEM enabled, and has Promise Fasttrak
support.
It just didn't see it as a single device, even though configured as such,
just two separate drives.
hde & hdg. It wasn't until I reconfigured the kernel it then saw it on
/dev/ataraid/d0
as a two drive array.

$What happens if you just use the current 2.4.9 errata kernels?  There
$is an updated ataraid driver in those, supporting raid1.
Havn't gone there yet..... I've now downgraded the whole install to 7.1
and used the Promise ft.o driver disk instead.... it's doing SCSI emulation
so
we loose cpu cycles to it but it works and we need to box up quckly...
it will grow to TB with multiple PromiseTX2's possibly very fast.
> Creates the array fine... I get a problem as soon as I attempt to populate
it...
> the box is a Athalon 1.4GHz and 1GB RAM, two other 60GB drives on IDE0 and
IDE1
> 
> I get an almost total slowdown/shutdown and top shows the load going to 8
or nine with noone
> logged in and console only....
$Definitely try the new kernel --- if the fasttrak driver you added
$was failing to negotiate dma then you'd see serious slowdown when
$trying to do intensive IO.

I have other systems at 7.1 running fine with the controller in
and acting as sda, sdb or sdc depending if it's the first, second or third
controller. So will back out the 7.1 install. Perhaps might try the 2.4.9 kernel
on a spare system when I'm free and see if that cures it....

$Cheers,
$ Stephen

Regards,

Dominic

Hi,

On Thu, Feb 07, 2002 at 08:21:08AM -0500, Baines, Dominic wrote:
> I have other systems at 7.1 running fine with the controller in
> and acting as sda, sdb or sdc depending if it's the first, second or
third
> controller. So will back out the 7.1 install. Perhaps might try the 2.4.9
kernel
> on a spare system when I'm free and see if that cures it....
Umm, the 2.4.9 errata kernel is the current kernel for both 7.2 _and_
7.1.

--Stephen