Re: Adaptec driver crashes (1/3 and 2/3)

From: Norman Diamond
Date: Sun May 10 2009 - 06:10:26 EST


Norman Diamond (I) wrote:
James Bottomley wrote:
On Wed, 2009-05-06 at 16:13 +0900, Norman Diamond wrote:
The easiest 100% reproducible way to crash a Linux system is as follows.

Insert either an Adaptec 1460 PCMCIA card or Adaptec 1480 CardBus card. Remove the card. Insert the card again. Even if you knew to set the console to a text mode terminal first (since Linux doesn't give Blue Screens of Death otherwise), you still won't get a dump. Not much to go on without a dump, but at least it's 100% repro.

Sounds like something's still pinned. When you remove it the first time, can you remove the module? (that's aha152x_cs right?).

With the 1460, after removing the first time, no I couldn't rmmod the module.
However, yesterday with the 1460 I couldn't repro the kernel crash. Yesterday with the 1460 I could only repro less severe lossage.

Today I tried Knoppix 6.0.1, kernel 2.6.28.4. aha152x_cs is a module here too. When inserting a 1460, nothing happened. Removing a 1460, nothing happened. Inserting a 1460, nothing happened. I modprobed aha152x_cs. It modprobed successfully. Removing a 1460, inserting, removing, inserting, nothing happened, even though the module remained loaded. The older partially working kernel was better than this.

Yesterday with the 1480 I did repro the kernel crash, the same as before. The aic7xxx driver was compiled in, not a module.

Today with Knoppix 6.0.1, kernel 2.6.28.4, this one is worse too. Here aic7xxx is a module, not compiled in. I don't remember if I had to modprobe it manually but I think not. I think that inserting a 1480 automatically modprobed the module and it worked for the time being. However, removing the card started the time bomb. Reinsertion was no longer necessary. Around 20 seconds after removal, if the console was in text mode then there would be a 1-line crash message with no dump. Attempts to rmmod aic7xxx failed. It didn't matter if I tried 0, 1, or multiple times while the time bomb was running, rmmod failed and the crash was still coming.

One time I shut down Knoppix 6.0.1 from whatever KDE's Start button is called, the usual way of doing a shutdown, instead of letting a crash do it. When the CD-ROM tray popped open, I guessed that Knoppix was nearly done shutting down, so I hit the Enter key, and the power went off a few seconds later. Older versions had some text mode messages on the screen during shutdown, and told us at the same time as it popped open the CD tray. OK, this one isn't the fault of a SCSI driver.

Sometimes there are reasons to stick to older partially working versions.

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