[gentoo-user] RAID problems - Is udev at fault here?

[gentoo-user] RAID problems - Is udev at fault here?

[Mark Knecht]

I have a newish high-end machine here that's causing me some problems
with RAID, but looking at log files and dmesg I don't think the
problem is actually RAID and more likely udev. I'm looking for some
ideas on how to debug this.

The hardware:
Asus Rampage II Extreme
Intel Core i7-980x
12GB DRAM
5 WD5002ABYS RAID Edition 500GB drives

The drives are arranged as a 3-drive RAID1 and a 2-drive RAID0 using mdadm.

The issue is that when booting gets to the point where it starts mdadm
and then about 50% of the time mdadm fails to find some of the
partitions and hence either starts the RAID1 with missing drives or in
the case of RAID0 won't start the RAID. For instance, /dev/md5 might
start with a failed partition, either /dev/sda5 or sdb5 or sdc5 isn't
found and the RAID is started. Once the problem has occurred I don't
seem to be able to fix it with anything other than a reboot so far.

Investigating dmesg when there is a failure I actually don't see that
the missing partition is ever identified and looking at the /dev
directory the partition isn't there either.

Personally I don't think the problem is with the drives as BIOS shows
me a table of the drives attached before booting and the 5 drives are
_always_ shown. If I drop into BIOS proper and use BIOS tools to look
at the drives I can _always_ read smart data and all drives respond to
DOS-based tools like SpinRite. It's only when I get into Linux that
they aren't found.

The problem hasn't changed much with different kernels from 2.6.32
through 2.6.34, nor do I see any difference running vanilla-sources or
gentoo-sources.

Currently I'm using udev-149 with devfs-compat and extra flags enabled.

Where might I start looking for the root cause of a problem like this?

Let me know what other info would be helpful.

Thanks,
Mark

[gentoo-user] Re: RAID problems - Is udev at fault here?

[walt]

On 05/16/2010 10:56 AM, Mark Knecht wrote:
> I have a newish high-end machine here that's causing me some problems
> with RAID, but looking at log files and dmesg I don't think the
> problem is actually RAID and more likely udev. I'm looking for some
> ideas on how to debug this.
>
> The hardware:
> Asus Rampage II Extreme
> Intel Core i7-980x
> 12GB DRAM
> 5 WD5002ABYS RAID Edition 500GB drives

I had an asus mobo that turned out to be great in the long run, but a few
of its newer hardware gadgets took months to be well-supported by linux.

I'm thinking (completely guessing :) it sounds like a driver that's not
setting some bit properly in a hardware register during boot.

That turned out to be a problem with the network chip on my asus, which
randomly didn't work after reboots.  Finally the driver got fixed after
I whined a thousand times to the driver maintainer at Broadcom :)

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: RAID problems - Is udev at fault here?

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 1:32 PM, walt <w41ter@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/16/2010 10:56 AM, Mark Knecht wrote:
>>
>> I have a newish high-end machine here that's causing me some problems
>> with RAID, but looking at log files and dmesg I don't think the
>> problem is actually RAID and more likely udev. I'm looking for some
>> ideas on how to debug this.
>>
>> The hardware:
>> Asus Rampage II Extreme
>> Intel Core i7-980x
>> 12GB DRAM
>> 5 WD5002ABYS RAID Edition 500GB drives
>
> I had an asus mobo that turned out to be great in the long run, but a few
> of its newer hardware gadgets took months to be well-supported by linux.
>
> I'm thinking (completely guessing :) it sounds like a driver that's not
> setting some bit properly in a hardware register during boot.
>
> That turned out to be a problem with the network chip on my asus, which
> randomly didn't work after reboots.  Finally the driver got fixed after
> I whined a thousand times to the driver maintainer at Broadcom :)
>

It very well could be something like that. I had a Compaq laptop a few
years ago which had an ATI chipset in it and which took a long time to
get DMA working on the hard drive controller to it was very slow for
the first few months.

The thing about this is that it's a single 6 port SATA controller in
an Intel chipset, albeit because it's the newer chipsets with the
newest processor (6 cores, 12 threads) it likely hasn't been seen by
too many people yet.

Let's assume you're right? I've been trying to determine how udev goes
about finding the actual hard drives and assigning them device names.
Is there a way that I can get udev to log what it's doing? Any sort of
debug messages I can get it to print in a log file somewhere?

It is a flaky problem and strangely it doesn't always miss every
partition on a given drive. For instance /dev/md3, md5 and md11
3-drive RAID1 arrays. You'd think if it was the controller failing it
would fail for all the partitions on a given drive, but it doesn't. It
might find sda3 for md3 but miss sda5 for md5. Strange.

Thanks for the ideas.

- Mark

[gentoo-user] Re: RAID problems - Is udev at fault here?

[walt]

On 05/16/2010 02:56 PM, Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 1:32 PM, walt<w41ter@gmail.com>  wrote:
>> On 05/16/2010 10:56 AM, Mark Knecht wrote:
>>>
>>> I have a newish high-end machine here that's causing me some problems
>>> with RAID, but looking at log files and dmesg I don't think the
>>> problem is actually RAID and more likely udev. I'm looking for some
>>> ideas on how to debug this.
>>>
>>> The hardware:
>>> Asus Rampage II Extreme
>>> Intel Core i7-980x
>>> 12GB DRAM
>>> 5 WD5002ABYS RAID Edition 500GB drives
>>
>> I had an asus mobo that turned out to be great in the long run, but a few
>> of its newer hardware gadgets took months to be well-supported by linux.
>>
>> I'm thinking (completely guessing :) it sounds like a driver that's not
>> setting some bit properly in a hardware register during boot.
>>
>> That turned out to be a problem with the network chip on my asus, which
>> randomly didn't work after reboots.  Finally the driver got fixed after
>> I whined a thousand times to the driver maintainer at Broadcom :)
>>
>
> It very well could be something like that. I had a Compaq laptop a few
> years ago which had an ATI chipset in it and which took a long time to
> get DMA working on the hard drive controller to it was very slow for
> the first few months.
>
> The thing about this is that it's a single 6 port SATA controller in
> an Intel chipset, albeit because it's the newer chipsets with the
> newest processor (6 cores, 12 threads) it likely hasn't been seen by
> too many people yet.
>
> Let's assume you're right? I've been trying to determine how udev goes
> about finding the actual hard drives and assigning them device names.
> Is there a way that I can get udev to log what it's doing? Any sort of
> debug messages I can get it to print in a log file somewhere?
>
> It is a flaky problem and strangely it doesn't always miss every
> partition on a given drive. For instance /dev/md3, md5 and md11
> 3-drive RAID1 arrays. You'd think if it was the controller failing it
> would fail for all the partitions on a given drive, but it doesn't. It
> might find sda3 for md3 but miss sda5 for md5. Strange.

Hm.  Is this your motherboard?:

http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=W7i5W4Pw4fH22Mih

Being a geek of a certain age, I find that products with names that invoke
mega-dose anabolic steroids usually don't fit my lifestyle very well.

I do better with product names that contain more sedate character strings
like VSOP or MOM.

By grepping through /usr/src/linux*/MAINTAINERS I turned up quite a few
email addresses at intel.com, none of which seem relevant to RAID or its
device drivers, but a polite email asking for a link to the appropriate
dev might bring a polite and useful reply.  That's how I connected with
the appropriate dev at Broadcom, who eventually fixed my ethernet driver.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: RAID problems - Is udev at fault here?

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 5:07 PM, walt <w41ter@gmail.com> wrote:
<SNIP>
>
> Hm.  Is this your motherboard?:
>
> http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=W7i5W4Pw4fH22Mih
>
> Being a geek of a certain age, I find that products with names that invoke
> mega-dose anabolic steroids usually don't fit my lifestyle very well.
>
> I do better with product names that contain more sedate character strings
> like VSOP or MOM.
>
> By grepping through /usr/src/linux*/MAINTAINERS I turned up quite a few
> email addresses at intel.com, none of which seem relevant to RAID or its
> device drivers, but a polite email asking for a link to the appropriate
> dev might bring a polite and useful reply.  That's how I connected with
> the appropriate dev at Broadcom, who eventually fixed my ethernet driver.
>

Yes, that's the motherboard. I don't care much about the names of
things myself. I had limited options for the new i7-980x processor at
the time I was ordering the hardware, and I'd never done overclocking
before (and technically still haven't) so I got it because it was an
Asus board which I've generally had very good luck with.

To be clear, the RAID I'm doing is mdadm Linux software RAID and
nothing having to do with the on-board RAID controller. The machine
uses the standard Linux SATA drivers, or so I think.

I like the VSOP idea. :-)

- Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: RAID problems - Is udev at fault here?

[Mark Knecht]

On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 5:17 PM, Mark Knecht <markknecht@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 5:07 PM, walt <w41ter@gmail.com> wrote:
> <SNIP>
>>
>> Hm.  Is this your motherboard?:
>>
>> http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=W7i5W4Pw4fH22Mih
>>
>> Being a geek of a certain age, I find that products with names that invoke
>> mega-dose anabolic steroids usually don't fit my lifestyle very well.
>>
>> I do better with product names that contain more sedate character strings
>> like VSOP or MOM.
>>
>> By grepping through /usr/src/linux*/MAINTAINERS I turned up quite a few
>> email addresses at intel.com, none of which seem relevant to RAID or its
>> device drivers, but a polite email asking for a link to the appropriate
>> dev might bring a polite and useful reply.  That's how I connected with
>> the appropriate dev at Broadcom, who eventually fixed my ethernet driver.
>>
>
> Yes, that's the motherboard. I don't care much about the names of
> things myself. I had limited options for the new i7-980x processor at
> the time I was ordering the hardware, and I'd never done overclocking
> before (and technically still haven't) so I got it because it was an
> Asus board which I've generally had very good luck with.
>
> To be clear, the RAID I'm doing is mdadm Linux software RAID and
> nothing having to do with the on-board RAID controller. The machine
> uses the standard Linux SATA drivers, or so I think.
>
> I like the VSOP idea. :-)
>
> - Mark
>

I continue to see this problem. I booted multiple times this morning
and cannot get the system to show /dev/sde:

c2stable ~ # ls -al /dev/sd*
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  0 May 24  2010 /dev/sda
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  1 May 24  2010 /dev/sda1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  2 May 24  2010 /dev/sda2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  3 May 24  2010 /dev/sda3
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  4 May 24  2010 /dev/sda4
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  5 May 24  2010 /dev/sda5
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8,  6 May 24  2010 /dev/sda6
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 16 May 24  2010 /dev/sdb
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 17 May 24  2010 /dev/sdb1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 18 May 24  2010 /dev/sdb2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 19 May 24  2010 /dev/sdb3
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 20 May 24  2010 /dev/sdb4
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 21 May 24  2010 /dev/sdb5
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 22 May 24  2010 /dev/sdb6
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 32 May 24  2010 /dev/sdc
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 33 May 24  2010 /dev/sdc1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 34 May 24  2010 /dev/sdc2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 35 May 24  2010 /dev/sdc3
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 36 May 24  2010 /dev/sdc4
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 37 May 24  2010 /dev/sdc5
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 38 May 24  2010 /dev/sdc6
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 48 May 24  2010 /dev/sdd
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 49 May 24  2010 /dev/sdd1
c2stable ~ #

sda, sdb & sdc are RAID1 partition drives. sdd & sde are RAID0. As sde
is not seen the RAID0 cannot be started.

I have rebooted mutiple times. BIOS says the drives are there and are
functional, at least as far as SMART data is concerned.

This is vanilla-sources as a few weeks ago anyway there wasn't yet the
right gentoo-sources to support my video card. That has probably
changed by now so I'll try that.

c2stable ~ # uname -a
Linux c2stable 2.6.34-rc5 #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Apr 26 12:04:14 PDT 2010
x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU X 980 @ 3.33GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
c2stable ~ #

Is there a known reason to try a newer udev?

c2stable ~ # emerge -pv udev

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!
[ebuild   R   ] sys-fs/udev-149  USE="devfs-compat extras (-selinux) -test" 0 kB

Total: 1 package (1 reinstall), Size of downloads: 0 kB
c2stable ~ # eix -I udev
[I] sys-fs/udev
     Available versions:  114 115-r1 119 124-r1 124-r2 141 ~141-r1
~145!t ~145-r1!t ~145-r2!t ~145-r3!t ~146!t 146-r1!t ~146-r2!t
~146-r3!t ~147-r1!t 149 ~150-r1!t ~151-r1 ~151-r2 ~151-r3 ~151-r4 ~154
**9999 {(+)devfs-compat (-)extras (+)old-hd-rules selinux test}
     Installed versions:  149(10:28:59 05/05/10)(devfs-compat extras
-selinux -test)
     Homepage:
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev.html
     Description:         Linux dynamic and persistent device naming
support (aka userspace devfs)

c2stable ~ #

I note in the info at the very end there are daemons for device-mapper
and udev-mount that are not running. Would they be involuved in this
problem?

Anyone who can give some guidance, please do.

Thanks,
Mark



c2stable ~ # lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation X58 I/O Hub to ESI Port (rev 13)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI
Express Root Port 1 (rev 13)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI
Express Root Port 3 (rev 13)
00:07.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub PCI
Express Root Port 7 (rev 13)
00:14.0 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub System Management
Registers (rev 13)
00:14.1 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub GPIO and Scratch
Pad Registers (rev 13)
00:14.2 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub Control Status
and RAS Registers (rev 13)
00:14.3 PIC: Intel Corporation 5520/5500/X58 I/O Hub Throttle Registers (rev 13)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB
UHCI Controller #4
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB
UHCI Controller #5
00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB
UHCI Controller #6
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB2
EHCI Controller #2
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) HD
Audio Controller
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Port 1
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Port 3
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Port 5
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) PCI Express Port 6
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB
UHCI Controller #1
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB
UHCI Controller #2
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB
UHCI Controller #3
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) USB2
EHCI Controller #1
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 90)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801JIR (ICH10R) LPC Interface Controller
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) 4 port
SATA IDE Controller
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) SMBus Controller
00:1f.5 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801JI (ICH10 Family) 2 port
SATA IDE Controller
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Device 68b8
03:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Device aa58
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8056
PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 12)
05:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technology Corp. 20360/20363 Serial
ATA Controller (rev 03)
05:00.1 IDE interface: JMicron Technology Corp. 20360/20363 Serial ATA
Controller (rev 03)
06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8056
PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 12)
08:02.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6306 Fire II
IEEE 1394 OHCI Link Layer Controller (rev c0)
c2stable ~ #

c2stable ~ # lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
vmnet                  30969  13
parport_pc             18434  0
parport                22905  1 parport_pc
vmblock                10230  1
vsock                  34429  0
vmci                   47148  1 vsock
vmmon                  66467  0
ipv6                  227547  32
snd_hda_codec_atihdmi     2415  1
snd_hda_codec_analog    71417  1
snd_hda_intel          21033  2
snd_hda_codec          71485  3
snd_hda_codec_atihdmi,snd_hda_codec_analog,snd_hda_intel
snd_hwdep               5562  1 snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm                73356  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
radeon                693168  2
ttm                    50826  1 radeon
drm_kms_helper         25564  1 radeon
snd_timer              18282  1 snd_pcm
drm                   177490  4 radeon,ttm,drm_kms_helper
agpgart                33073  2 ttm,drm
i2c_algo_bit            4896  1 radeon
snd                    57168  10
snd_hda_codec_analog,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_timer
rtc_cmos                8375  0
i2c_i801                7217  0
cfbcopyarea             3249  1 radeon
cfbimgblt               2122  1 radeon
cfbfillrect             3261  1 radeon
soundcore               6779  1 snd
sky2                   44504  0
snd_page_alloc          7396  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
c2stable ~ #

c2stable ~ # emerge --info
Portage 2.2_rc67 (default/linux/amd64/10.0, gcc-4.3.4,
glibc-2.10.1-r1, 2.6.34-rc5 x86_64)
=================================================================
System uname: Linux-2.6.34-rc5-x86_64-Intel-R-_Core-TM-_i7_CPU_X_980_@_3.33GHz-with-gentoo-1.12.13
Timestamp of tree: Fri, 21 May 2010 13:45:01 +0000
app-shells/bash:     4.0_p37
dev-java/java-config: 2.1.10
dev-lang/python:     2.6.4-r1
dev-util/cmake:      2.6.4-r3
sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.13
sys-apps/sandbox:    2.2
sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.63-r1
sys-devel/automake:  1.8.5-r4, 1.9.6-r3, 1.10.3, 1.11.1
sys-devel/binutils:  2.18-r3
sys-devel/gcc:       4.3.4
sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1
sys-devel/libtool:   2.2.6b
virtual/os-headers:  2.6.30-r1
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -@EULA dlj-1.1 PUEL"
CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-O2 -march=native -pipe"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/share/X11/xkb /usr/share/config"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d
/etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/revdep-rebuild
/etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo /etc/texmf/language.dat.d
/etc/texmf/language.def.d /etc/texmf/updmap.d /etc/texmf/web2c"
CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=native -pipe"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--with-bdeps y"
FEATURES="assume-digests distlocks fixpackages news parallel-fetch
preserve-libs protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-logs
unmerge-orphans userfetch"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.osuosl.org/ "
LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1"
LINGUAS="en"
MAKEOPTS="-j13"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times
--compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180
--exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage/layman/pentoo"
SYNC="rsync://rsync.namerica.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="X acl amd64 berkdb bzip2 cli cracklib crypt cxx dbus dri fortran
gdbm gnome gpm gstreamer iconv kde mmx modules mudflap multilib
ncurses nls nptl nptlonly openmp pam pcre perl pngi policykit pppd
python qt3support qt4 readline reflection session spl sse sse2 ssl
sysfs tcpd unicode xorg zlib" ALSA_CARDS="intel-hda hda-intel"
ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty
extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul
mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol"
APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon
authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default
authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav
dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter
file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime
mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id
userdir usertrack vhost_alias" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="evdev
mouse keyboard" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633
glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LINGUAS="en"
RUBY_TARGETS="ruby18" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="radeon fbdev vmware"
XTABLES_ADDONS="quota2 psd pknock lscan length2 ipv4options ipset
ipp2p iface geoip fuzzy condition tee tarpit sysrq steal rawnat
logmark ipmark dhcpmac delude chaos account"
Unset:  CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL,
PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS

c2stable ~ #

c2stable ~ # rc-update show --verbose
           alsasound |
            bootmisc | boot
             checkfs | boot
           checkroot | boot
               clock | boot
         consolefont | boot
          consolekit |
         crypto-loop |
                dbus |      default
       device-mapper |
             dmcrypt |
            dmeventd |
                fuse |
                 gpm |
                hald |
              hdparm |
            hostname | boot
             keymaps | boot
               local |      default nonetwork
          localmount | boot
                 lvm |
               mdadm |
              mdraid |
             modules | boot
               mysql |
        mysqlmanager |
            net.eth0 |      default
              net.lo | boot
            netmount |      default
                nscd |
          ntp-client |      default
                ntpd |      default
             numlock |
             pciparm |
             pwcheck |
           pydoc-2.6 |
           rmnologin | boot
              rsyncd |
           saslauthd |
                slpd |
              smartd |
                sshd |      default
            svnserve |
           syslog-ng |      default
                udev |
    udev-dev-tarball |
          udev-mount |
      udev-postmount |      default
             urandom | boot
          vixie-cron |      default
              vmware |      default
                 xdm |      default
           xdm-setup |
c2stable ~ #

[gentoo-user] Re: RAID problems - Is udev at fault here?

[walt]

On 05/24/2010 11:44 AM, Mark Knecht wrote:
 > ...
> 05:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technology Corp. 20360/20363 Serial
> ATA Controller (rev 03)

The only experience I have with a JMicron controller is an outboard eSATA docking
station (a great product) and it uses the AHCI_SATA driver.  I don't know what
magic 'ahci' implies (Wikipedia tells you more than you want to know), but you
might try that driver to see if your dmesg says anything different.

Intermittent failures on bootup strongly suggest driver problems, in my
experience.  However, in my day the acid test was: does the hardware work
on Windows?  Thankfully those days are long gone ;)

[gentoo-user] Re: RAID problems - Is udev at fault here?

[walt]

On 05/25/2010 05:37 PM, walt wrote:
> On 05/24/2010 11:44 AM, Mark Knecht wrote:
>  > ...
>> 05:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technology Corp. 20360/20363 Serial
>> ATA Controller (rev 03)
>
> The only experience I have with a JMicron controller is an outboard eSATA docking
> station (a great product) and it uses the AHCI_SATA driver...

I finally remembered to check the outboard controller and it's the same one,
though they call it JMB360 (rev 02).  It's definitely an AHCI controller, so
you need the AHCI_SATA driver in the kernel.

Have you tried that yet?