freebsd stable - Jul 2007 - problems with Hitachi 1TB SATA drives

Hello all,

I've run across a problem that I hope someone can aid me with.

I have a fileserver that currently has a 4-disc raid connected to an IDE 3ware
card. I had hoped to
replace this dying system with a pair of synchronized 1TB SATA drives. When
trying to newfs them
both eventually failed with DMA READ or WRITE timeouts. Here's some infos:

FreeBSD rum.dub.net 6.2-STABLE FreeBSD 6.2-STABLE #2: Sat Jul 21 09:05:25 PDT
2007
unfurl@rum.dub.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386

<snip from dmesg>
ad0: 43979MB <IBM DTLA-307045 TX6OA50C> at ata0-master UDMA100 <--
system disk
ad4: 953869MB <Hitachi HDS721010KLA330 GKAOA70F> at ata2-master SATA150
ad6: 953869MB <Hitachi HDS721010KLA330 GKAOA70F> at ata3-master SATA150
twed0: <Unit 0, RAID5, Normal> on twe0
twed0: 583440MB (1194885120 sectors)

A complete dmesg is at http://dub.net/rum.dub.net.dmesg

Initially the attempted newfs would cause this:

Jul 21 00:21:45 rum kernel: ad4: TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA retrying (1 retry left)
LBA=54194911
Jul 21 00:22:20 rum kernel: ad4: TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA retrying (1 retry left)
LBA=107260543
Jul 21 00:22:57 rum kernel: ad4: FAILURE - device detached
Jul 21 00:22:57 rum kernel: subdisk4: detached
Jul 21 00:22:57 rum kernel: ad4: detached
Jul 21 00:24:19 rum kernel: ad6: FAILURE - device detached
Jul 21 00:24:19 rum kernel: subdisk6: detached
Jul 21 00:24:19 rum kernel: ad6: detached

After several tries I was able to get both disks newfs'd and mounted but
they quickly fell down with
DMA timeouts. On one occasion the machine actually panic'd too:

ad4: TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA48 retrying (1 retry left) LBA=1456106111
ad4: TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA48 retrying (0 retries left) LBA=1456106111
ad4: FAILURE - WRITE_DMA48 timed out LBA=1456106111
ad4: TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA retrying (1 retry left) LBA=54194911
ad4: TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA48 retrying (1 retry left) LBA=461407775
ad4: TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA48 retrying (0 retries left) LBA=461407775
ad4: FAILURE - WRITE_DMA48 timed out LBA=461407775


Fatal trap 12: page fault while in kernel mode
fault virtual address   = 0x66
fault code              = supervisor read, page not present
instruction pointer     = 0x20:0xc07253c3
stack pointer           = 0x28:0xd9724b9c
frame pointer           = 0x28:0xd9724ba4
code segment            = base 0x0, limit 0xfffff, type 0x1b
                         = DPL 0, pres 1, def32 1, gran 1
processor eflags        = interrupt enabled, resume, IOPL = 0
current process         = 779 (mdnsd)
trap number             = 12
panic: page fault


I've read that bad SATA cables could cause this, the cables I'm using
are brand new but are probably
pretty cheap.

Help freebsd-stable, you're my only hope! :)

-Bill

-- 
-=| Bill Swingle - unfurl@dub.net

On Tue, 24 Jul 2007, Bill Swingle wrote:
> I've read that bad SATA cables could cause this, the cables I'm
using
> are brand new but are probably pretty cheap.
Unlike they're both faulty too..

You need to post your dmesg otherwise we have no idea what controller 
you're using..

-- 
Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer
for Genesis Software - http://www.gsoft.com.au
"The nice thing about standards is that there
are so many of them to choose from."
  -- Andrew Tanenbaum
GPG Fingerprint - 5596 B766 97C0 0E94 4347 295E E593 DC20 7B3F CE8C
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Bill Swingle wrote:
> I have a fileserver that currently has a 4-disc raid connected to an
> IDE 3ware card. I had hoped to replace this dying system with a pair
> of synchronized 1TB SATA drives. When trying to newfs them both
> eventually failed with DMA READ or WRITE timeouts. Here's some infos:
A few things to check:

* Is your PSU powerful enough? (Test with the old RAID-5 set
disconnected or with a different PSU.)
* Does all fans in the box spin easily? (If the bearings of the old
drives and fans are giving out they can draw a lot more power.)
* If you disconnect ad4, does ad6 work fine by itself?
* Does the problem go away if you replace the SATA cables?
* Install smartmontools from ports and run a long selftest on both
drives. (Or get the drive tools from Hitachi and run a full test from
DOS.)
* Is ACPI enabled and does 'vmstat -i' show any IRQ sharing? Maybe try
to move some PCI cards around.

/Daniel Eriksson

At 08:44 PM 7/23/2007, Bill Swingle wrote:
>After several tries I was able to get both disks newfs'd and mounted 
>but they quickly fell down with DMA timeouts. On one occasion the 
>machine actually panic'd too:
Hi,
         What options do you have set in the BIOS for the sata 
controller ?  Do you have anything like "compatibility" mode ? If so, 
try turning it off and put it in the "advanced" or "native" 
mode.   Also I found with some older ICH4 controllers (dont know 
about 5) if you disabled the secondary IDE controller in the BIOS, 
"bad things" happen.  If you have it off, try turning it back on.


         ---Mike