Hi,-
I found someone corresponding to your name writing about a problem with
the megaraid sas driver/hardware on the LKML:
http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/9/6/12
We have a Dell (2950, running 2.6.18 #1 SMP) as well, and the way I
managed to kill the thing dead in its tracks (symptoms basically what
you you describe) is with smartctl:
root@salgari:~# smartctl --all /dev/sda
smartctl version 5.34 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-5 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/
Device: DELL PERC 5/i Version: 1.00
Device type: disk
Local Time is: Wed Oct 25 10:14:40 2006 CEST
Device does not support SMART
Error Counter logging not supported
Device does not support Self Test logging
----
[61101.681857] sd 0:2:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
[61101.681944] EXT3-fs error (device sda1): ext3_readdir: directory
#7553069 contains a hole at offset 0
[61103.944794] sd 0:2:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
[61103.944879] EXT3-fs error (device sda1): ext3_readdir: directory
#7553069 contains a hole at offset 0
[61104.672212] sd 0:2:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
[61104.672295] EXT3-fs error (device sda1): ext3_readdir: directory
#7553069 contains a hole at offset 0
[61105.255981] sd 0:2:0:0: rejecting I/O to offline device
[61105.256066] EXT3-fs error (device sda1): ext3_readdir: directory
#7553069 contains a hole at offset 0
----
Dead in the water. We suspect that in any case there are some disk
problems, which is why we were trying to use smartctl in the first place.
I was just curious if you managed to figure anything out...
Thanks,
Dave Welton