Topic: Big Hard Disks

[Lars]

Hi!

Some Infos:
The last two days I tried to install SME 5.6 on a very new system: MSI Board (a very new one with Bluetooth), two 120 GB HD etc.
I thought, new hardware will be compatible enough for a little server...
No, I didn't want to use all these features but I've bought the board to use the RAID-Controller.
But the result of my installation-orgie is, after hours of waiting the progress-bar shows 570 hours and copying was terrible slow!!!!!!!!!
I tried another CD with the same result. On another PC with older hardware it takes only 10 minutes to set up the box.

CU
Lars

[Chris Woods]

I've recently had the same problem.  If you are using the IDE's that came of the motherboard and you're drives are over 80GB you will have this problem.  I opted to use the 3ware Escalade 7000-2 (the ONLY ATA RAID controller supported by E-Smith) and it resolved the problem.

[toby]

Is it definitely a matter of 80GB as i have had the same problem with the MSI board (EMax2) and an intel 845 based board with two 60GB seagates running the software raid 0.....flys when not mirrored however.

[Ed Form]

Chris Woods wrote:
>
> I've recently had the same problem.  If you are using the
> IDE's that came of the motherboard and you're drives are over
> 80GB you will have this problem.  I opted to use the 3ware
> Escalade 7000-2 (the ONLY ATA RAID controller supported by
> E-Smith) and it resolved the problem.

This isn't size dependent. The same problems with software raid occur with several [possibly all] types of disks on SME 5.6. I've seen it on Seagate 60s and on Western Digitals as well. Something in the software raid/disk handling combination of SME 5.6 is bust. Best guess from the symptoms I have seen is a clash between journalling and raid organisation that results in constant housekeeping to the exclusion of data recording.

Ed Form

[Charlie Brady]

Ed Form wrote:

> This isn't size dependent. The same problems with software
> raid occur with several [possibly all] types of disks on SME
> 5.6. I've seen it on Seagate 60s and on Western Digitals as
> well. Something in the software raid/disk handling
> combination of SME 5.6 is bust.

The only problems which we've ever seen, or have ever been reported, have been with Intel 845 chipsets, as is the case here. There is a known DMA problem with the RH7.3 kernel series with that chipset.

I've had success tuning down BIOS settings (UDMA2 on both drives worked for me).  Give that a try.

Regards

Charlie

[Ed Form]

Charlie Brady wrote:
>
> Ed Form wrote:
>
> > This isn't size dependent. The same problems with software
> > raid occur with several [possibly all] types of disks on SME
> > 5.6. I've seen it on Seagate 60s and on Western Digitals as
> > well. Something in the software raid/disk handling
> > combination of SME 5.6 is bust.
>
> The only problems which we've ever seen, or have ever been
> reported, have been with Intel 845 chipsets, as is the case
> here. There is a known DMA problem with the RH7.3 kernel
> series with that chipset.

It would be good if the answers to some of these fundamental problems were posted on the bugs page so that we could move on and forget about them. I reported this matter to smebugs@mitel.com on Saturday 28th December last, and there have been a number of exchanges about it in the forums since. Why no one liner on the bugs page?

> I've had success tuning down BIOS settings (UDMA2 on both
> drives worked for me).  Give that a try.

That's the one liner!!!!!!!

Ed Form

[Steve Clifton]

I have an SME 5.6 running software raid on 2  * IBM 180Gb disks (7200rpm)

Seems to work fine with ATA100 and DMA enabled.

Using it as a samba server without any problems. Slower than NT but thats another story.

Regards

Steve