Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 19:20:22 -0400 (EDT) From: "John T. Farmer" <jfarmer@goldsword.com> To: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, larry@pkunk.net Cc: jfarmer@goldsword.com Subject: Re: No help... Message-ID: <200007212320.TAA15713@rapier.goldsword.com> In-Reply-To: <MKEOLDIJFGDJKDLHGFEGIEEPCBAA.larry@pkunk.net>
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On Thu, 20 Jul 2000 21:58:00 "Lawrence Cotnam Jr." said: > I'm most disappointed. I've been running FreeBSD since version 2, and in > all this time I've never experience the total lack of any assistance from > the userbase. In the past, I've received good advice and help regarding > FreeBSD-small for embedded systems, which my company has used for our > embedded server product. But now... In the past 3 months, I've posted two > very serious issues I've experienced and the first issue, regarding Bus > Mastering SiS 5591 PCI IDE controller going into UDMA mode receive *ZERO* > replies. Nothing. And now... my troubles with a 3COM 3C509 NIC has > received one (rather useless, but thank you Julian. I appreciate your > input, even if it had nothing to do with the problem) reply. This is just > so disappointing. I've been using this operating system for about 5 years > and I used to love it. The support used to be wonderful. The hardware > support used to be wonderful. Now... its not. I can't get any of you folks > to so much as offer any suggestions (excepting Julian) to my questions, even > when I supply ample information regarding the problem, and attempted > solutions. I've jumped ship. > > After 10 hours of hard work, I successfully migrated my entire server to > Debian Linux, which I must say, the legacy hardware support is there. Like > FreeBSD used to be. I wish you all well, but I won't be back with FreeBSD > any time soon. Not only has the eroding legacy hardware support been a > great disappointment, the lack of any userbase input regarding my troubles > with such legacy hardware has been even more disappointing. I sorrows me to > have to file away 5 years of know how and experience with this what used to > be wonderful operating system, but the support is gone, the legacy drivers > are flaky at best. I'm truely sorry that you don't feel that your got your "money's worth" with FreeBSD support. I've used FreeBSD since 2.0.x days with little problem. Now as to your issue with lack of answers, well I could only find your post to the questions list, in June [1]. I couldn't find _ANY_ posts from you on the hardware list or the bugs list about _either_ of these problems. Now if you had bothered to scan the archives at the website, you would have found these notes: WRT the SiS 5591: http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=73526+76672+/usr/local/www/db/text/1999/freebsd-hardware/19990621.freebsd-hardware http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=1499283+1503645+/usr/local/www/db/text/2000/freebsd-questions/20000514.freebsd-questions http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=391100+393746+/usr/local/www/db/text/2000/freebsd-questions/20000611.freebsd-questions WRT your 3C509: http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=554179+557957+/usr/local/www/db/text/2000/freebsd-questions/20000423.freebsd-questions http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=338124+339573+/usr/local/www/db/text/2000/freebsd-bugs/20000319.freebsd-bugs And gnats db record wrt Sis 5591... (And this was for 2.2.6!) s [1998/06/21] kern/7014 [PATCH][STABLE] Add support for SiS 5591 bridge to pcisupport.c The 3C509 works in 3.x systems. I haven't tried it in 4.x yet, I moved all my production machines to Intel Pro100's several years ago & dumped the 509's into win95 boxes. And from Greg Lehey's postings, it appears that some versions of the SiS 5591 chipset have problems with different types of UDMA drives. So if you want to go run Linux and blame FreeBSD for what looks to be user error from my seat, go right ahead. John <Who's tired of people blaming me for not answering questions I didn't see and don't know the answer to...> [1] Lawrence Cotnam Jr.'s original post to FreeBSD-questions >Date: Thu, 22 Jun 2000 22:36:20 -0700 >From: "Lawrence Cotnam Jr." <larry@pkunk.net> >To: <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> >Cc: <mrhoda@mystic.com> >Subject: Problems with SiS 5591 PCI IDE >Message-ID: <MKEOLDIJFGDJKDLHGFEGEEOJCAAA.larry@pkunk.net> > >I've been running FreeBSD 4.0 since its release on my Single Board computer >system which employs a SiS 5591 PCI IDE controller. All has been just fine >and happy until I recently upgraded the disk drive to a 13G drive capable of >UDMA2. FreeBSD detects that the SiS 5591 is capable of UDMA2 and places the >controller and drive in UDMA2 mode, at which point the system freezes when >it attempts to mount the root filesystem. Efforts to correct the situation >have resulted in many problems which has caused me to strongly consider >reverting to FreeBSD 3.x due to all the problems I'm encountering. > >My first attempt to fix the problem was to recompile my kernel and making >sure the option ATA_ENABLE_ATAPI_DMA was not defined. Rebooting this kernel >still resulted in detection of UDMA2 capable devices and the freeze when >attempting to mount the root file system. > >Second, needing my web and domain server back desperetely, I reverted to >older WDC and WD drivers to boot the machine, disabling all ATA devices in >my config file and rebuilding my kernel. This booted successfully, but >after about 4 hours of operation, the driver reported a error during writing >and disabled multi-sector I/O. No other adverse problems were detected >initially. But worried I proceeded with more attempts to get the ATAPI >drivers working again with my machine. > >Next, I looked into the source code for ata-dma.c, added a return just >before it tries to probe for DMA capable devices and rebooted. This >resulted in a usable system for a little while. After several hours of >operation, I began to notice HARD WRITE errors occuring occasionally, as >well as other indications of disk corruption occuring. Paniced, I reverted >again to WD drivers without multi-sector I/O. > >So what's the deal? Is the IDE controller driver code just plain flaky now? >I've noticed, when I boot with WD drivers, its even reporting a different >controller text during device detection. With WD drivers I get "ide_pci0: ><SiS 5591 Bus-master IDE Controller>", when I boot with ATAPI drivers, I get >"atapci0: <SiS 5591 ATA33 controller>" > >I want to stress that before upgrading the computer's disk drive, I've never >had a single problem, so its definitely some sort of brokenness with the >fact my new drive supports UDMA2. What I'd like is a reliable system, not >UDMA support. Any suggestions in getting a reliable system with this >mixture of hardware would be appreciated. > >Lawrence Cotnam Jr. >phone: (775) 337-2536 >email: larry@pkunk.net > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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