[2665] in linux-scsi channel archive
Re: advice needed
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mike Simons)
Mon Oct 20 01:00:20 1997
From: Mike Simons <msimons@saic1.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.971018092308.227B-100000@kyle.i-connect.net> from Michael Neuffer at "Oct 18, 97 09:24:19 am"
To: neuffer@trudi.zdv.Uni-Mainz.DE
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 00:52:56 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: linux-scsi@vger.rutgers.edu
> Mike Neuffer wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Oct 1997, John Robinson wrote:
> > Francesco Potorti` writes ("Re: advice needed"):
> > > Common wisdom suggests Buslogic flashpoint types for all but the most
> > > demanding environments, which would be best served by DPT cards.
> >
> > Are DPT collaborating with/supporting Linux? When I've needed tech
> > support in the past they've never heard of Linux...
>
> Yes, they do. Who and when did you ask ?
I started corresponding with DPT tech support by e-mail July 1st, after
I had a few bad tech support phone calls. Where I was basically told
they don't support Linux. I tried sending e-mail in hopes the questions
would be routed to someone with a clue. It took about a week to get
replies to most questions and I had to ask several questions more than
once to get an answer. Sometime around August the exchange below started
answering the following a question in my original July 1st note...
: Many Operating Systems:
: Is there any work in progress or planned to port the Storage Manager
: software over to Linux?
:
: Most of our Intel based machines here are running Linux exclusively.
: Rebooting this server into msDOS in order to check on the status of
: and reconfigure the RAID is going to be very inconvenient. Even a simple
: curses based program would be very useful.
#Angela Peterson
#Technical Support Engineer
#
#We do plan on porting Storage Manager to Linux, it has been something we
#have had alot of customers request. I do not have any time estimates at
#this time, and I do not believe that have started that yet.
then in her next note...
#I will do my best to answer your questions as accurately as possible. I
#have spoken with the programmer who will be doing the port for Storage
#Manager to Linux. At this time that project is about 6 months away, and of
#course that date is subject to change.
[...]
#We will start testing with Linux when we port the Storage Manager product.
#Since we did not write the Linux driver that has never been a need for us
#to test the operating system. Once the Storage Manager is ready we will
#need to test the operating system to test our software.
%Jackie Woulfe
%Technical Support Supervisor, DPT
then wrote:
%Unfortunately I do not have a timeframe as to when the Linux driver and the
%Linux Storage Manager will complete it's certification tests. DPT is an
%OEM driven company and at the present time the present time the demand for
%the Linux operating system and Storage Manager is not as great as other
%items on the agenda. I apologize for any inconvenience that this may
%cause.
It was very clear to me that the U.S. based corporate tech support
tree does not support Linux in any way. At some point in September
I was told by my boss to stop wasting time on this card and return it.
Then Lisa McCarty the sales person I dealt with tried to connect
me with the local (branch office) tech support, who admitted knowing
little about Linux (but much about NT). He said he would try to check
with his European contacts for help, since Linux is much more popular
over there. I never heard back from him.
Fortunately the return went well....
Occasionally I get annoyed by what seems to be 'only good news' about
DPT cards on this list... the DPT card and the first set of three
Micropolis drives was an upgrade to a very stable server which had 150
day uptimes (reboots for hardware/location changes limited this). With
the DPT card the only thing I could get the machine to do reliably was
crash...
I compared the read/write performance of a raid-0 made up of three
ultra-wide Micropolis drives on the DPT 3334/UW card, to a single
narrow-fast Micropolis drive on a Mylex-948: the single drive
was *faster*. Now we have a plain Mylex-958 card running software
raid-0 (for the data only areas) which is an order of magnitude faster
and *much* more stable than I could ever get the DPT card to be.
My advice to people with new DPT cards, if it doesn't work with
Mike Neuffer's driver, try the generic DPT driver. I ended up with
a 'more' stable but slow machine this way (any time Mike's driver
reset the card I had a complete hard lockup of the system). Then if
it doesn't work fast/reliably return it before the 30 period is up.
Help from that company was very hard to get.
I would *love* to play around with the DPT card more on my own
time... if it doesn't work in Linux I don't use it.
--
TTFN,
Mike Simons
Science Applications International Corporation
msimons@saic1.com 703-925-5674
my boss should have taken Mike Neuffer's note in the driver
source as a word of warning:
> * I have to thank DPT for their excellent support. I took *
> * me almost a year and a stopover at their HQ, on my first *
> * trip to the USA, to get it, but since then they've been *
> * very helpful and tried to give me all the infos and *
> * support I need. *
complete copies of the Linux specific exchange follows...
my message to support@dpt.com:
:msimons@saic1.com on 08/01/97 07:33:27 AM
:To: Tech Support/DPT
:Subject: Re: Case # J17077W
:
:> I think I covered everything. If not, let me know.
:
: Liz,
:
: This is question that has still not been answered from my original
:message a few weeks ago (with a minor change):
:
:: Is there any work in progress or planned to port the Storage Manager
:: software over to Linux?
::
:: Most of our Intel based machines here are running Linux exclusively.
:: Rebooting this server into msDOS in order to check on the status of the
:: and reconfigure the RAID is going to be very inconvenient. Even a simple
:: curses based program would be very useful.
::
:: Do you know if:
:: the DOS version of your manager works under dosemu?
:: the SCO version under under iBCS?
:: the Win3.1 version works under WINE?
:
: I have also been wondering about the dynamic expansion of a RAID-5
:array: does the upgrade BIOS for the card exist to do that yet?
:
: Lastly... is it possible to change the basic block size that the
:controller talks to the drives with?
: Rather than using 512 byte blocks it would be really nice to reformat
:the disks and use 4k byte blocks (since that is the size of block our
:operating system uses on the drive).
:
: Mike Simons
: Science Applications International Corporation
: msimons@saic1.com 703-925-5674
Angela replies:
#From support@dpt.com Mon Aug 4 11:06:11 1997
#To: msimons@saic1.com
#Subject: Re: Case # J17077W
#
#Hello Mike,
#
#Thank you for your e-mail message regarding your questions.
#
#We do plan on porting Storage Manager to Linux, it has been something we
#have had alot of customers request. I do not have any time estimates at
#this time, and I do not believe that have started that yet.
#
#I do not know if the DOS version will work under dosemu, or if the SCO
#version will work under iBCS, or if the Win 3.1 version will work under
#WINE. We do not do any testing with Linux at our facility and I have not
#had any customers report that that configuration works.
#
#Dynamic Array Expansion is still being developed. We will not have that
#available to customers for another couple of months.
#
#DPT only offers the options of formatting drives to either 512k bytes per
#sector or 528k, not to mention the drive has to support that, and I don't
#think very many support a sector size of 4k.
#
#If I can be of any further assistance please feel free to contact me.
#
#Best Regards,
#
#Angela Peterson
#Technical Support Engineer
#SUPPORT@DPT.COM
my second note asking for more specif date information:
:From msimons Mon Aug 4 22:40:15 1997
:To: Tech Support/DPT
:Subject: Re: Case # J17077W
:
:Hi Angela,
: ...Charles, Liz, Jackie, and the rest.
:
:>Mike wrote:
:>>: Is there any work in progress or planned to port the Storage Manager
:>>: software over to Linux?
:>
:> We do plan on porting Storage Manager to Linux, it has been something we
:> have had alot of customers request. I do not have any time estimates at
:> this time, and I do not believe that [they] have started that yet.
:
: Could someone ask your software division about the status of a port?
:
:>> : Do you know if:
:>> : the DOS version of your manager works under dosemu?
:>> : the SCO version under under iBCS?
:>> : the Win3.1 version works under WINE?
:>
:> I do not know if the DOS version will work under dosemu, or if the SCO
:> version will work under iBCS, or if the Win 3.1 version will work under
:> WINE. We do not do any testing with Linux at our facility and I have not
:> had any customers report that that configuration works.
:
: Strange... Some of your advertising comes with the cool Linux Penguin
:logo right between the BSDi and "tested and certified for SCO" logos. =)
: Are there any plans to start testing your hardware in Linux?
:
: My first attempt to write a large amount of data (3 Gigs) to a RAID-5
:resulted in 20 Megs/minute. Must get more information about performance
:tuning of this card in Linux. So I have joined the Linux mailing lists for
:RAID, EATA, and SCSI and intend to ask other users questions.
:
:> Dynamic Array Expansion is still being developed. We will not have that
:> available to customers for another couple of months.
:
: Sorry to hear this... guess that means I'm going to be using alot of
:tapes. Last we asked about this I thought we were told 'maybe some time in
:August', did they mean 1998? ;)
:
: Is it possible to get a better estimate?
: Or should I just ask about it again in October?
:
:
:The original response I got, on July 8th from Jackie Woulfe, said:
:: I apologize for the delay, I have sent some of your inquires to our
:: programming engineers and am still awaiting their response.
:
: I took that to mean that ?he? was looking into the linux port (which was
:in my original request)... Is it possible that Jackie has a better answer
:as to the timing of a Linux port?
:
: All of you use the same reply-to address of support@dpt.com...
: I don't mind hearing from a different DPT Tech Support person each time
:I send in questions or even multiple people for the same question. But it
:would sure be nice if replies kept coming in from _some_ tech support
:people until the questions got answers. ...without me sending the same
:question two weeks later. ;)
:
:
: Thanks,
: Mike Simons
: Science Applications International Corporation
: msimons@saic1.com 703-925-5674
Angela reply's:
#From support@dpt.com Wed Aug 6 14:18:13 1997
#Return-Path: <support@dpt.com>
#To: msimons@saic1.com
#Subject: Re: Case # J17077W
#
#Hello Mike,
#
#I will do my best to answer your questions as accurately as possible. I
#have spoken with the programmer who will be doing the port for Storage
#Manager to Linux. At this time that project is about 6 months away, and of
#course that date is subject to change.
#
#I also discussed the dosemu, iBCS, and WINE with the programmer. He said
#that at this time there is not an EATA pass through in the Linux driver,
#and he doubted that any of those type emulators would work with Storage
#Manager because of that.
#
#We will start testing with Linux when we port the Storage Manager product.
#Since we did not write the Linux driver that has never been a need for us
#to test the operating system. Once the Storage Manager is ready we will
#need to test the operating system to test our software.
#
#As far as Dynamic Array Expansion is concerned, that feature is going to be
#something that is operating system specific. We plan on releasing Dynamic
#Array Expansion for Windows NT in late September. At this time there are no
#plans to provide Dynamic Array Expansion for Linux.
#
#If I can be of any further assistance please feel free to contact me.
#
#Best Regards,
#
#Angela Peterson
#Technical Support Engineer
#SUPPORT@DPT.COM
Jackie's reply:
%From support@dpt.com Fri Aug 8 11:17:25 1997
%Return-Path: <support@dpt.com>
%To: msimons@saic1.com
%Subject: Re: Case # J17077W
%
%
%Hello Mike,
%
%Thank you for your reply. I will look into the problems you encountered
%with the I/O status information and report them to our engineering
%department if needed.
%
%Unfortunately I do not have a timeframe as to when the Linux driver and the
%Linux Storage Manager will complete it's certification tests. DPT is an
%OEM driven company and at the present time the present time the demand for
%the Linux operating system and Storage Manager is not as great as other
%items on the agenda. I apologize for any inconvenience that this may
%cause.
%
%The Dynamic Array Expansion is not OS file system related rather the
%ability to use the Storage Manager utility under the operating system.
%The Dynamic Array Expansion will be performed via the Storage Manager
%utility. The first Storage Manager utility to have this option will be the
%NT version, then Netware and then SCO Unix. Other operating system will
%follow thereafter. At the present time it looks as though this option
%will not be available in the DOS environment but I am investigating this a
%little further.
%
%If you have any questions or if I can be of further assistance regarding
%this issue, please feel free to contact me using the case
%number that I assigned in the SUBJECT of this message.
%
%Best Regards,
%Jackie Woulfe
%Technical Support Supervisor, DPT
