gmirror problem with HP Proliant ML110 G5

[Josep Pujadas i Jubany]

On Fri, 18 Apr 2008 02:20:34 -0700, Jeremy Chadwick wrote
> On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 07:12:06AM +0200, Gianni wrote:
> 
> Josep, the disks may be the same in capacity, but they aren't completely
> identical.  It's fairly obvious one is a Seagate and the other is
> HP/Compaq drive.

Yes, I know. It is difficult to have exactlly the same model when you buy a 
machine to HP in Spain. First disk comes with the machine and the second in 
a separate box. But I have many machines like this using gmirror and no 
problem up to now.

> This is very likely **not** the cause of the DMA errors you're 
> seeing, but I did want to take a moment to state that mix-matching 
> drives with different semantics in a mirror is somewhat risky.

No other solution. If one disk fails and I have to change it I'm quite sure 
I will not find the same model. Same geometry yes, but exactly the same 
model not.
 
> > There are a few reports of this on the freebsd-stable mailing list in 
March
> > and I'm also experiencing the same problem, so far none of the suggested
> > resolutions has helped for me.
> > http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-stable/2008-March/thread.html
> >
> > I've got the issue on a custom built box with amd64 + 7.0 + gmirror and
> > I've got a Proliant ML110 G5 running 6.3 I'd like to upgrade to 7.0 but 
too
> > scared to do so until this issue appears to have been identified and 
fixed.
> > Copying in freebsd-stable as it's not just a problem on Proliant.
> > -Gianni
> 
> I've documented the DMA problem quite thoroughly.  The DMA errors are
> not specific to gmirror:
> 
> http://wiki.freebsd.org/JeremyChadwick/Commonly_reported_issues
> 
> If the problem is easily repeatable, and you have serial console
> available on the box, please contact Scott Long who has offered to help
> track the source of these problems down.

Many thanks! Interesting help. I didn't know about smartmontools. I 
installed it and I made a long test for my disk. It seems ok! I will try to 
change the cable, but it is a new cable, as the disk.

I had other problems with this Proliant:

* NIC card was not detected. I had to patch some source files and recompile 
the kernel.
* reboot doesn't work. It is necessary to charge ipmi kernel module and use 
watchdog. Similar problem with shutdown (impossible to power off).
* I had also some DMA errors with the CD when installing FreeBSD 7.0. I 
burned a new one and I worked. But now I'm wondering if it was a similar 
problem that I have now.

Regards,

Josep Pujadas