[7717] in linux-scsi channel archive

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SCSI queueing status.

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Eric Youngdale)
Sat Dec 18 00:09:34 1999

Date:   Sat, 18 Dec 1999 00:05:39 -0500 (EST)
From: Eric Youngdale <eric@andante.org>
To: Jens Axboe <axboe@image.dk>, Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
	Douglas Gilbert <dgilbert@interlog.com>, linux-scsi@vger.rutgers.edu
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9912171849590.30229-100000@gwyn.tux.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII


	I just sent off the last patcheset to Linus to be included in the
next release.  As I mentioned before, I am going to be on vacation for the
next 10 days, and while I will have a laptop, I won't be checking it quite
as regularly.  If serious issues arise, I will be in a position to try and
investigate to some degree (as best I can without real SCSI hardware).  I
do have a source tree on my laptop.

	The patchset that I sent out corrects a couple of race conditions,
and solves a DMA pool exhaustion issue that was pointed out.

	There are a couple of open issues that I know of:

	1) There is still a slight problem of DMA exhaustion, at this
point it the symptom is just a lot of spurious messages about running low,
but the system should work it's way through the problem.  I probably need
to tweak the heuristics a bit more.  This will only affect people who have
ISA SCSI cards that do DMA, and who also have more than 16M (I remember
when that was a rarity...).  At the moment (with the patch), this should
be no more than a nuisance.

	2) I have broken the support for > 16 disks.  I have a workaround
for this one - a slight modification to scsi_get_request_dev in scsi_lib.c
should get these at least partly working.  The person who originally
posted the report is having a different problem now, and I am still
waiting for details before I can figure out what exactly the problem is. I
am enclosing the workaround for the first problem - I am reluctant to
submit workarounds to Linus, as workarounds have this nasty tendancy to
gain a life of their own.

	3) There was a report on linux-kernel about a scatter-gather table
segment counting problem, which led to a panic.  I ask for, but have yet
to receive details on this one.  As far as I know, there is only one
person who has reported this issue.

	4) There was one report of being unable to write a CDROM.  I have
asked some questions, but at this point I don't know the nature of the
problem, nor do I know how many people would be affected.

-Eric

"The world was a library, and its books were the stones, leaves,
 brooks, grass, and the birds of the earth.   We learned to do what only
 a student of nature ever learns, and that was to feel beauty."
			Chief Luther Standing Bear - Teton Sioux

Workaround for >16 disk problem.

*** drivers/scsi/scsi_lib.c     Wed Dec 15 21:32:32 1999
--- drivers/scsi/scsi_lib.c  Sat Dec 18 00:34:36 1999
***************
*** 599,604 ****
--- 599,614 ----

        ASSERT_LOCK(&io_request_lock, 1);

+        /*
+         * FIXME(eric) - we need to fix this so that we recognize that
+         * a single driver might support a number of different major
+         * numbers.  For now, this workaround should do the trick.
+         * This is *ONLY* a workaround.
+         */
+         if( major >= SCSI_DISK1_MAJOR && major <= SCSI_DISK7_MAJOR ) {
+                 major = SCSI_DISK0_MAJOR;
+         };
+
        for (spnt = scsi_devicelist; spnt; spnt = spnt->next) {
                /*
                 * Search for a block device driver that supports this




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