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Date:      Thu, 9 Nov 2000 23:43:34 +0100 (CET)
From:      Joshua Goodall <joshua@roughtrade.net>
To:        =?ISO-8859-1?Q?G=E9rard_Roudier?= <groudier@club-internet.fr>
Cc:        adrian@freebsd.org, Paolo Tealdi <tealdi@sb.polito.it>, freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org, freebsd-smp@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Compaq DL370 [long]
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.21.0011092341150.64333-100000@juice.shallow.net>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.10.10011092049290.1381-100000@linux.local>

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We had some trouble with frisbee on DL380's which Adrian Chadd sorted out
for us... although not, I believe, working alone, so I'll let him reply to
this <g>.

J

On Thu, 9 Nov 2000, [ISO-8859-1] Gérard Roudier wrote:

> 
> 
> I don't know about SMP, but could you please let me know what driver is
> attaching your SYMBIOS controller. Could be either `sym' or `ncr', but
> they differ regarding parity checking handling.
> 
> OTOH, are you sure it is a SCSI parity error that is reported. When using
> the `sym' driver, PCI parity errors are also reported.
> 
> Now, if this PCI|SCSI parity error is a real parity error, you should,
> IMHO, check if NT would not be working for the reason it wouldn't care
> about SCSI|PCI parity checking being _actually_ enabled. It may be
> unbelievable that COMPAQ is selling hardware that fails parity, but this
> should be checked, in my opinion.
> 
> Btw, the latest nasty parity problem I have had to work around in `sym'
> driver was a PCI parity problem that occurs on some systems using SYMBIOS
> PCI-SCSI chips. Latest `sym' driver in -RELENG4 and -current does detect
> that, WARN USER ABOUT, and disable PCI parity checking by the master.
> 
>   Gérard.
> 
> On Thu, 9 Nov 2000, Paolo Tealdi wrote:
> 
> > As i already asked in the list, i'm trying to understand if FreeBSD support 
> > the hardware in subject.
> > I tried to install FreeBSD on a system at my vendor's home and i found some 
> > interesting (and funny) things.
> > 
> > The system was a
> > single / double processor 733 MHz
> > 128 MB memory
> > standard COMPAQ SCSI controller (symbios)
> > standard COMPAQ ETHERNET controller
> > 
> > S.O. : FBSD 4.1 RELEASE
> > 
> > 1) First, i tried to start booting directly from Fbsd CDROM.
> > The system seemed to start, system recognized the scsi controller, but 
> > when  checked the hard disk suddendly presented an error (seemed a parity 
> > error on SCSI, if i remember well )and the installation program aborted as 
> > it didn't find any disk.
> > 
> > 2)consequently I loaded the COMPAQ SYSTEM INSTALLATION CDROM, I configured 
> > the system for an "other operating system" and i tried again to start with 
> > FreeBSD CDROM. This time all went OK. I installed the system, booted 
> > sometimes and all seemed well (also network controller was found).
> > 
> > 3) Unfortunately the hardware the vender gave me was a single processor but 
> > i would like to buy a double processor system, so the vendor told me that 
> > he managed to receive one more and continue the test.And so we did.
> > 
> > 4) Yesterday the vendor contacted me the processor was arrived and that i 
> > could go to do the final testing, and so i did.
> > 
> > 5)The vendor told me that he didn't touched the original system (it is an 
> > NT guru and doesn't know ANYTHING about *nix ) and we installed the second 
> > processor. The system bootstrapped, all seemed to go well, FreeBSD seemed 
> > to recognized the second processor (the last thing i did the first time was 
> > to rebuild the kernel with SMP support, and i did it only decommenting the 
> > option SMP , option APIC and default for NPROCS ... copying GENERIC 
> > configuration) but when it tried to load the root partition again i found 
> > the original error (parity on SCSI bus).
> > 
> > 6) This time i suggested that there was an hardware problem, so we tried to 
> > install NT4 .After one hour of installation (it's not so quick as FBSD) the 
> > NT4 server seemed to be installed OK, without any error ( :-(( ) .
> > 
> > 7) So i reinstalled FBSD, after server setup installation with two 
> > processor and again all seemed to go OK. I recompiled the kernel (again 
> > decommenting only SMP options) and this time (for three consecutive time ) 
> > FBSD hung on boot after APIC check, one time messaging that it got an 
> > uninspected interrupt (43) (kernel config defaults are for 25 interrupts) 
> > and the others two without any message.
> > 
> > 8) I stopped any kernel rebuilding, as i'm not so skilled with SMP 
> > installation.
> > 
> > After this (very long) story i'd like to ask :
> > 
> > a) All these things are normal for a double processor system ?
> > b) Must i continue to try changing parameters in kernel configurations ?
> > c) Can be an hardware problem ?
> > d) It's normal for COMPAQ hardware ?
> > e) There are significant change on 4.2 for SMP that can avoid this problems ?
> > f) Anybody has found similar SCSI and double processor problems with Compaq 
> > or other vendors hardware ?
> > 
> > I installed FBSD on a variety of servers ( mostly compatible) but never 
> > happened to me these things ... In any case i have never installed a double 
> > processor system.
> > 
> > Sorry for the long story, and for my not so well english. ...
> > 
> > Best regards, Paolo Tealdi
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Ing. Paolo Tealdi         Library & News System Administrator
> > Politecnico Torino        Phone : +39-11-5646714 , FAX : +39-11-5646799
> > C.so D. degli Abruzzi, 24 - 10129 Torino - ITALY  Email: tealdi@sb.polito.it
> > 
> > 
> > 
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> > with "unsubscribe freebsd-smp" in the body of the message
> 
> 
> 
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