> Linux is crashing all the time now. I think maybe its partly my
> hardware's fault. Can someone confirm or otherwise enlighten me?
Yes, I'll try to :-)
It is your faulting hardware.
> What happens is that during during disk activity, the computer more
> or less locks up. If you're lucky enough to have the computer crash
> while your at a text console, you can see the error messages repeated
> scroll past, but you'll have an extremely hard time getting the
> computer to respond to anything, including telnet.
>
> The error is as follows:
>
> Couldn't Get A Free Page .....
> Kernel Panic: aic7xxx_free (aic7xxx_free) Couldn't find a free SCB.
I experienced the same problem wit 2.0.30.
2.0.30 brings a lot more i/o performance than version < 2.0.30
AFAIK due to enhancements I've seen in the buffer management.
[snip]
> Will all of these problems disappear if I just dump my Adaptec
> control and get a BusLogic Control?
Noooooooooooo, I don't think so!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Only if other than Adaptec lets the problem disapear being
an i/o bottleneck ;-)
[snip]
My suggestion is (because you didn't give information about your
adapter type and SCSI devices attached) that you do have
a bus termination or a cable quality problem.
FYI: My problem, which showed exactly the same circumstances as yours, went
away setting the correct bus termination.
If you have a mix of small and wide SCSI devices the problem often
is the termination.
The small end of the internal/or external bus only
terminates the low SCSI byte of the bus. Even external cable
adpters often don't have a high byte terminator in the connector.
So You have to switch the hig byte terminator to on in your
adpater's setup.
Adaptecs automatic termination mode in newer SCSI bioses
doesn't work proper. Please use the direct selection for the
bus termination.
If You are using ultra devices your problem may be to use a weak
external cable or you may have internal flat cables interfere each other.
First case: get a premium type cable for ultra speed
Second case: seperate internal cables from each other as far as possible
Please mail me your configuration to give me an impression,
Heinz
--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Systemmanagement Entwicklungsbereich 2 Deutsche Telekom AG Entwicklungszentrum Darmstadt Heinz Mauelshagen Otto-Roehm-Strasse 71C Postfach 10 05 41 64205 Darmstadt Germany (06151) 886-419 e2system@ez-darmstadt.telekom.de FAX-386
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-