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Date:      Sun, 3 Nov 2002 11:50:09 -0600
From:      Jason Godfrey <godfrey@sol.aptsolutions.com>
To:        Jeff Jirsa <jeff@unixconsults.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Disk activity leading to hangs
Message-ID:  <20021103115009.C43728@sol.aptsolutions.com>
In-Reply-To: <20021102220616.S7015-100000@boris.st.hmc.edu>; from jeff@unixconsults.com on Sat, Nov 02, 2002 at 10:12:09PM -0800
References:  <20021102235447.D35685@sol.aptsolutions.com> <20021102220616.S7015-100000@boris.st.hmc.edu>

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(CC'ing to freebsd-hackers, since a previous discussion took place there.)

Thanks. I tried pinging the machine after a hang, but no response. 

After a bit of experimentation it seems that the hang (at least on the AMD)
occurs under write activity. (A yes > /tmp/foo hangs it.) It seems to hold up
under read loads.

I'm hoping someone on the lists has either a workaround/fix or could maybe say
"I've hit this, but when I switched to a non-maxtor drive things worked."

- Jason

On Sat, Nov 02, 2002 at 10:12:09PM -0800, Jeff Jirsa wrote:
> On Sat, 2 Nov 2002, Jason Godfrey wrote:
> 
> >
> > Basically under heavy disk load (buildworld, large package install, nightly
> > script run) the system will hang hard. The two systems have very little in
> > common, one is a P2 400 running FreeBSD-Stable from Oct 2, the other (a new
> > machine) is a AMD 1600+ running FreeBSD 4.5-Release. The faster machine seems
> > to hit the hange much more regularly.
> >
> > The only thing in common between the two machines I can think of is that they
> > both have Maxtor IDE drives on a Ultra-ATA channel. (On the P2 400 I've been
> > running in PIO mode, as that _seems_ to reduce the frequency of the hangs.
> > On the AMD it seems to make no difference.)
> >
> 
> I've seen it too, with a 4.5 system with a maxtor drive. Unfortunately,
> I've never been able to track it down to anything certain: I was (and
> still am) leaning towards poor hardware over an OS fault. The only thing
> leading me to believe it's NOT a hardware issue is that the kernel seems
> to be running, although nothing responds: network activity lights flash on
> the NIC and switch, but NOTHING else works (have to powercycle).
> 
> I remember someone else pointing out the same problem about a year ago,
> and nobody ever offered any explanation of the problem or even hinted at a
> solution.
> 
> The last thread is here (watch the line wrap):
> http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=6504+0+archive/2002/freebsd-hackers/20020512.freebsd-hackers
> 
> 
> - Jeff

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