freebsd stable - Nov 2006 - help identifying gmirror, ata, or motherboard problem (Tyan S2865G2NR)

I'm having a problem with a machine that I support and would like some
feedback.

The system was built up from a barebones Transport PX22, which uses a
Tyan S2865G2NR motherboard.

It has two drives:

  ad4: 286188MB <Maxtor 6V300F0 VA111680> at ata2-master SATA300
  ad6: 286188MB <Maxtor 6V300F0 VA111630> at ata3-master SATA300

A while back I noticed in the daily periodic report that gmirror had
dropped ad4.  We rebooted and got things going again and it ran
smoothly for a month or so, then dropped it again.

At that point we did a warranty replacement of ad4 and things have
been running smoothly for a couple of months.

A few days ago gmirror kicked ad6 out of the raid, which the following
lines in dmesg:

  ad6: FAILURE - device detached
  subdisk6: detached
  ad6: detached
  GEOM_MIRROR: Device gm0s1: provider ad6s1 disconnected.

We're adding an external device into the mirror and are planning to do
a warranty swap on this drive too.

The system is running, but feels sluggish.  It might be interesting to
note that the disk activity light is continuously lit.

The system if running the stock 6.1 RELEASE.

FreeBSD foo.com 6.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE #0: Sun May  7 04:15:57 UTC 2006
root@bloom.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SMP  amd64

I'm trying to figure out if we've just gotten two lousy disks, or if
there might be a driver or motherboard issue.

Does any of this ring any bells?

I'm suggesting that we upgrade to the tip of the stable tree, but the
owner's not convinced.  I can't tell if there's been anything
relevant
in the stable release that might address this (aside from all the
other great stuff that's in there).

Thanks for any input,

g.

Some advice here from a guy that's been doing professional data recovery for
years...

Don't touch Maxtor. Ever. Luckily Fujitsu don't make ide drives any
more.
They were worse than Maxtor.
If you have existing Maxtor dirves and can't change them make sure you keep 
them as cool as possible.

I would recommend Western Digital or Seagate for IDE drives. Western Digital 
make RAID edition drives which are very fast and reliable which I personally 
favour for these kind of situations and they only cost a bit more.


-Clay

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "George Hartzell" <hartzell@alerce.com>
To: <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 14, 2006 10:00 PM
Subject: help identifying gmirror, ata,or motherboard problem (Tyan 
S2865G2NR)

>
> I'm having a problem with a machine that I support and would like some
> feedback.
>
> The system was built up from a barebones Transport PX22, which uses a
> Tyan S2865G2NR motherboard.
>
> It has two drives:
>
>  ad4: 286188MB <Maxtor 6V300F0 VA111680> at ata2-master SATA300
>  ad6: 286188MB <Maxtor 6V300F0 VA111630> at ata3-master SATA300
>
> A while back I noticed in the daily periodic report that gmirror had
> dropped ad4.  We rebooted and got things going again and it ran
> smoothly for a month or so, then dropped it again.
>
> At that point we did a warranty replacement of ad4 and things have
> been running smoothly for a couple of months.
>
> A few days ago gmirror kicked ad6 out of the raid, which the following
> lines in dmesg:
>
>  ad6: FAILURE - device detached
>  subdisk6: detached
>  ad6: detached
>  GEOM_MIRROR: Device gm0s1: provider ad6s1 disconnected.
>
> We're adding an external device into the mirror and are planning to do
> a warranty swap on this drive too.
>
> The system is running, but feels sluggish.  It might be interesting to
> note that the disk activity light is continuously lit.
>
> The system if running the stock 6.1 RELEASE.
>
> FreeBSD foo.com 6.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE #0: Sun May  7 04:15:57 
> UTC 2006     root@bloom.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SMP  amd64
>
> I'm trying to figure out if we've just gotten two lousy disks, or
if
> there might be a driver or motherboard issue.
>
> Does any of this ring any bells?
>
> I'm suggesting that we upgrade to the tip of the stable tree, but the
> owner's not convinced.  I can't tell if there's been anything
relevant
> in the stable release that might address this (aside from all the
> other great stuff that's in there).
>
> Thanks for any input,
>
> g.
> _______________________________________________
> freebsd-stable@freebsd.org mailing list
> http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-stable
> To unsubscribe, send any mail to
"freebsd-stable-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"
>

George Hartzell wrote:
> I'm having a problem with a machine that I support and would like some
> feedback.
> 
> The system was built up from a barebones Transport PX22, which uses a
> Tyan S2865G2NR motherboard.
> 
> It has two drives:
> 
>   ad4: 286188MB <Maxtor 6V300F0 VA111680> at ata2-master SATA300
>   ad6: 286188MB <Maxtor 6V300F0 VA111630> at ata3-master SATA300
> 
> A while back I noticed in the daily periodic report that gmirror had
> dropped ad4.  We rebooted and got things going again and it ran
> smoothly for a month or so, then dropped it again.
> 
> At that point we did a warranty replacement of ad4 and things have
> been running smoothly for a couple of months.
> 
> A few days ago gmirror kicked ad6 out of the raid, which the following
> lines in dmesg:
> 
>   ad6: FAILURE - device detached
>   subdisk6: detached
>   ad6: detached
>   GEOM_MIRROR: Device gm0s1: provider ad6s1 disconnected.
> 
> We're adding an external device into the mirror and are planning to do
> a warranty swap on this drive too.
> 
> The system is running, but feels sluggish.  It might be interesting to
> note that the disk activity light is continuously lit.
> 
> The system if running the stock 6.1 RELEASE.
> 
> FreeBSD foo.com 6.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE #0: Sun May  7 04:15:57 UTC
2006     root@bloom.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/SMP  amd64
> 
> I'm trying to figure out if we've just gotten two lousy disks, or
if
> there might be a driver or motherboard issue.
> 
> Does any of this ring any bells?
> 
> I'm suggesting that we upgrade to the tip of the stable tree, but the
> owner's not convinced.  I can't tell if there's been anything
relevant
> in the stable release that might address this (aside from all the
> other great stuff that's in there).
> 
> Thanks for any input,
Hi,

I had same problem few month ago and it was motherboard problem in my 
case. (the whole batch of ASUS barebones problem more precisely) Problem 
appeared with Seagate disks more often than with Hitec or Samsung, so my 
first thoughts was "it must be bad hard drive or batch of hard
drives",
but after many replacements and drives from other manufacturer I start 
to guess "it must be driver problem"... after next month of testing I 
found same problems on this batch of barebones with Linux and same 
barebones from different batch were running Linux for a long time... 
"say good bye Asus".
I can't be 100% sure this is your case too, but I think so.

Miroslav Lachman

PS: you can check the drive status by smartctl 
(/usr/ports/sysutils/smartmontools) or by some utility from drive 
manufacturer before you do warranty return