SATA Raid 1 Intel Server Board Hung on heavy disk i/o

I installed redhat linux 9 on a Intel Server board, it is runnig SATA RAID 1. It runs fine on light loading, however, when there is heavy disk read activities, the OS crashs and the only thing I could do is to press the reset button. The latest bios firmware and RAID driver have been used. Any idea on how to solve the problem? The details of my system are shown as below:


OS : Redhat linux 9 (kernel 2.4.20-8)
Board : Intel server board SE7210TP1-E (SR1325TP1-E)
Raid Driver : Adaptec ICH5-R/S Serial ATA RAID Driver (RAID 1)
Hard disk: Seagate SATA 160GB ST3160023AS (x2)
Ram : DDR 400 Duel Channel (512MB x 2)


Thanks!

Hi, this is Eduardo, from Spain

I own exactly the same server, installed same OS and got same problem
I get I/O errors on heavy hard disk access, using RAID 1

I've been in touch with Intel for a week, and still have no answer.

I've added noacpi noapic on boot, as I've seen in the readme file inside the driver I downloaded from Intel

Extrange, that driver has dissapeared from Intel's support web site. Humm...
This is the way I use both parameters:
--------------------
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.20-8smp)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-8smp ro pci=noacpi noapic root=LABEL=/
initrd /initrd-2.4.20-8smp.img
--------------------
It's suppoused to be used to avoid i/o errors (as I've read), but doesnt work
I've just found this page, still haven't tried:
Intel Download

Have you already solved your problem? can you give me any help?

Thanks in advance

Hi,

Glad to see that we are not alone in problems with the SR1325 / SR1325TP1-E intel platform.

We have not yet observed the disk crashing problem that you mention, but first were just trying to get decent disk performance. We have tried Debian, Gentoo and RedHat involving more than 6 kernel, 2 bios upgrades, IDE disk access, and SATA with and without using the ich5 RAID support.

The only decent disk I/O that we got was 50+ MB/s on RedHat 9.0 / 2.4.20-8 kernel using the ICH5 SATA RAID 1. All other configurations gave disk I/O under 30 MB/s (all testing done using hdparm(1)). We have even had one disk giving 20 MB/s while the other gives 5!!??

We are happy with the processing capacity and form factor of the system, but the lack of reasonable speed from the disk controllers (except using ICH5 and SATA RAID 1), makes the system quite useless.

We desire to run a linux O/S using the md raid tools (in combination with mdadm) so that we get notification from the system on disk failure. We do not believe that this is possible using the ICH5 SATA RAID and Linux, which is the only way we have found to get 50+ MB/s disk I/O.

Anyone got any clues on getting decent disk I/O out of this system ??

Somewhat frustrated,

Hugo Connery

Two notes:

1. the system's disk I/O is around 50 MB/s under Gentoo using Linux Software RAID 1 across two IDE disks (kernel 2.6.7)
2. I/O of 40+ under Fedora Core 2 (kernel 2.6.5) with ICH5 SATA controller configured as JBOD (no raid) and using Linux Soft. RAID 1.

Some improvement.

/Hugo

PS: No major load testing, but have done disk access speed tests whilst heavy disk writes in progress (for 2. above). Disk read speed goes down (as would be expected) but no OS crash.

Hi , I am in the process to buy the SR1325TP1-E platform to install the red hat 9.0.
I found this on the intel website.

The reference url is
http://support.intel.com/support/mot.../CS-009920.htm

The messages below is in the pdf file at that page.

-----------
Red Hat Linux 9.0 and SuSE Linux 8.2 kernels do not support
Intel® 6300ESC I/O Controller Hub
Issue: The OS reports the Intel® 6300ESC I/O Controller Hub as unknown devices
because the OS kernel does not contain support this device.
Red Hat Linux 9.0 kernel 2.4.20-8 does not include native support for Intel®
6300ESC I/O Controller Hub.
Implication: Accessing the disk in PIO mode is considerably slower than DMA mode.
Installation of operating system is in PIO mode, DMA mode is not supported.
Read and write on PATA and SATA drives uses POI mode only, DMA mode is
not supported.
Format of a SATA hard drive has taken ~4 times as long as PATA hard drive of
similar size.
Workaround: None.
Status: No fix. This newer hardware is not supported by older operation systems, and
the OS vender has no plans to provide an update to the OS.

I also had disk performance problems on SE7210TP1-E board, Linux kernel 2.4.31-smp.
After upgrading BIOS to version P08.00 (Build 0037) all works fine.
The BIOS files are available from Intel site:
http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scri...ProductID=1640
___
Serge Vakulenko,
Cronyx Engineering

Hi,

Although I mentioned above that things improved. It didn't last for long.
I have given up on this architecture. We have tries 4 different Linux
disributions and kernels, 3 differents BIOSes and MS. The disk system
was never stable.

IMHO this platform has an unstable disk system, which doesn't say much
for the testing procedures of the producer.

Over and out,

Hugo