freebsd stable - Sep 2007 - Question regarding Intel ICH7 motherboard and integrated RAID controller

Hi folks;

I have a new Intel ICH7 board here that has Quad-core support.

It works well EXCEPT....

It has an on-board RAID controller with some internal buffer memory.

I'm not all that interested in using it as a RAID adapter.  I am, however,
interested in using it as a disk adapter, as a way to both spread load AND
benefit from its cache memory.

Unfortunately, BTX panics if I attach a disk to it!  I have no idea if
FreeBSD would see the disks as just "normal" "ad" disks, as
I can't get
anywhere near that far to find out...

Any ideas?  Why would BTX throw a hissy fit?

--
-- 
Karl Denninger (karl@denninger.net) Internet Consultant & Kids Rights
Activist
http://www.denninger.net	My home on the net - links to everything I do!
http://scubaforum.org		Your UNCENSORED place to talk about DIVING!
http://genesis3.blogspot.com	Musings Of A Sentient Mind


%SPAMBLOCK-SYS: Matched [@freebsd.org+], message ok

At 06:36 PM 9/15/2007, Karl Denninger wrote:
>I'm not all that interested in using it as a RAID adapter.  I am,
however,
>interested in using it as a disk adapter, as a way to both spread load AND
>benefit from its cache memory.
Can you not turn off the RAID feature in the BIOS so that the SATA 
ports work just as SATA disks ?

         ---Mike

On Sun, 16 Sep 2007, Karl Denninger wrote:
> It has an on-board RAID controller with some internal buffer memory.
>
> I'm not all that interested in using it as a RAID adapter.  I am,
> however, interested in using it as a disk adapter, as a way to both
> spread load AND benefit from its cache memory.
>
> Unfortunately, BTX panics if I attach a disk to it!  I have no idea
> if FreeBSD would see the disks as just "normal" "ad"
disks, as I
> can't get anywhere near that far to find out...
>
> Any ideas?  Why would BTX throw a hissy fit?
Possibly a bug in BTX.. without the dump info it can't be debugged 
though..

Could be a buggy BIOS too.

Also if you aren't using it as RAID I doubt it will use the cache memory 
at all..

-- 
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
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 187 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
Url :
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/attachments/20070916/370583fd/attachment.pgp

Karl Denninger wrote:
> Hi folks;
> 
> I have a new Intel ICH7 board here that has Quad-core support.
> 
> It works well EXCEPT....
> 
> It has an on-board RAID controller with some internal buffer memory.
There's a known issue with an interrupt storm when the ICH7R is
configured for AHCI or RAID, and a pr was filed back in July(don't have
the number, search for interrupt storm on atapci1+).  The suspicion was
that some peripheral no one has identified yet is hammering the apic and
we can't mask it.

The workaround is to set the BIOS for IDE mode.  It's a bit of a drag
because SATA-II mode isn't reached when in IDE mode, only in AHCI (and
RAID?) mode.  If you don't panic when you set it for IDE mode then
you've probably run into the same problem.

On the plus side FreeBSD on the Q6600 *rocks* and our geom stuff does
the RAIDdy stuff nicely for a software solution.  I sympathize with you
as I spent most of the day yesterday trying to work this same problem.