Date: Fri, 29 May 1998 14:51:43 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: tcobb <tcobb@staff.circle.net>, "'Mike Smith'" <mike@smith.net.au> Cc: "'freebsd-current@freebsd.org'" <freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: DPT driver fails and panics with Degraded Array Message-ID: <19980529145143.B20360@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <509A2986E5C5D111B7DD0060082F32A402FAC3@freya.circle.net>; from tcobb on Thu, May 28, 1998 at 11:54:49PM -0400 References: <509A2986E5C5D111B7DD0060082F32A402FAC3@freya.circle.net>
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(removing -scsi; it's not *that* interesting) On Thu, 28 May 1998 at 23:54:49 -0400, tcobb wrote: >> From: Mike Smith [mailto:mike@smith.net.au] >> Sent: Thursday, May 28, 1998 10:04 PM >> >>> HISTORY >>> >>> I've used DPT in FreeBSD since last November, first with the >>> hacked 2.2.2 driver. I upgraded to 2.2.6 to fix a MBUF leak that >>> was crashing me about once per week. As 2.2.6, the MBUF leak >>> disappeared and was replaced with a once every 2-3 day panic which >>> it appeared was not going to get fixed by anyone (bidone: buffer >>> not busy). So, I bit the bullet and upgraded recently to 3.0, >>> which seemed to fix both of these prior panics only to reveal that >>> the supposedly "high availability" software driver for my HA >>> hardware is miserable during the most critical times. >> >> Given that biodone is only called from disk drivers, and I guess >> you're probably only using the DPT driver, it sounds like your two >> problems are one. >> >> Certainly, given that 3.0 upgrade was taken against the >> indicators, it's >> hard to feel that many of your accusations are terribly justifiable. > > Excuse me? Could you please explain what you mean by "taken against the > indicators"? Good question. I suspect that the tone of your message rubbed Mike up the wrong way. He may have been over-reacting, but I can understand where he's coming from. You have apparently decided to use -CURRENT and the DPT driver on a live system, and are upset that it doesn't perform as well as production software. We are also often upset about the quality of the -CURRENT software, but most of us either try to fix it or report things in a more neutral manner. We see rather too many messages just plain complaining. > My problem report (most of which you snipped) pointed out a deficiency > in the DPT driver code which renders it useless in HA applications. I > believe that this deficiency is likely to be present in ALL VERSIONS of > this code, unless suddenly, people are putting the newest code in the > oldest versions of the OS. If you just want to report a bug, use send-pr. That will reach the person responsible for it as quickly as possible (consider that a lot of us just drop some of the mailing lists when the combined volume gets too high). The purpose of sending the message to -CURRRENT would be to draw the problem to the attention of other people using the software. > "Indicators" are that I shouldn't be using FreeBSD for any High > Availability or critical operations -- I AM using FreeBSD for > 15 live > servers. > > Now, what was your point? Well, Mike's probably asleep, but how about this for starters: People occasionally have other reasons for wanting to use FreeBSD-CURRENT. The following are not good reasons: o They see it as a way to be the first on the block with great new FreeBSD features. This is not a good reason, because there's no reason to believe that the features will stay, and there is good reason to believe that they will be unstable. o They see it as a quick way of getting bug fixes. In fact, it's a way of testing bug fixes. Bug fixes will be retrofitted into the -STABLE branch as soon as they have been properly tested. o They see it as the newest officially supported release of FreeBSD. This is incorrect: FreeBSD-CURRENT is not officially supported. The support is provided by the users. Basically, I'd guess Mike is saying "don't use FreeBSD-CURRENT in production environments". Greg -- See complete headers for address and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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