This is a bit of an ME TOO, I second this. I was mistaken by the
assumption that an "old", established product such as the Adaptec
1542CF has a reliable support, but here's my experience:
Adaptec 1542 (terminated), 2 m cable to HP 35480A, active terminator,
no other devices attached: some major lockups during dump.
Tekram DC-390 U (auto termination, SYM53C875 based), 2 m cable to HP
35480A, 1m+anythng cable to Micropolis hard disk, Yamaha CD writer,
Plextor CD-ROM drive, actively terminated. Actually beyond specs.
Stress tested fine. Although this is a lucky coincidence and nothing to
rely on, I mention it to contrast it.
There is absolutely no reason why the Adaptec 1542 could lock up the
entire dump process in state "D" (not even giving timeouts or
something) and why it need not recover from fixed bus faults (id est:
have an unterminated SCSI cable with loose end lying around, get bus
errors, remove the cable => aha1542 still loops aborting/resetting).
Removing cables from different adaptors such as SYM53c875 gets them
back up working. Besides, my 1542 disabled itself after locking, and
needed to be powered-down to get it back up working. IF the aha1542 has
means to disable itself to avoid damage because of bus faults, the
driver should be aware of this and in case return error instead of
locking.
I am regretfully not the one to debug low-level Kernel scsi drivers, I
have no low-level Kernel experience, I don't have the Adaptec 1542
specs either.
IF 2.2 is released without these issues resolved, we'd better mark
Adaptec 1542 support "EXPERIMENTAL" again.
-- Matthias Andree- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/