[CentOS] 3ware disk failure -> hang

Fri Jan 6 19:47:47 UTC 2006
Mickael Maddison <centos at silverservers.com>

Friday, January 6, 2006, 11:16:31 AM, you wrote:

> On Fri, 6 Jan 2006 at 9:39am, Bryan J. Smith wrote

>> Had you used the 3Ware's intelligent hardware RAID, it would
>> have hidden the drive disconnect from the system.  You'd see
>> a log entry on the failure, and that the array was in a
>> "downgraded" state.
>>
>> Instead, you're using software RAID, and it's up to the
>> kernel to not panic on itself because a disk is no longer
>> available.  The problem isn't the 3Ware controller, it's the
>> software RAID logic in the kernel.

> Yes, I'm aware of all that.  I've been using 3wares for *years* (as 
> giggle would easily have revealed).  But, as the archives of this list
> will attest to, using these boards in hardware RAID mode in centos 4 is
> bad news.  Performance sucks.  There's some sort of nasty interaction 
> between the 3wares and ext3 which makes the combo unusable, really. And
> we all know the upstream provider's stance on XFS.

I have a number of machines running 3ware cards on CentOS 3/4 and I
haven't had any trouble with them in HW RAID.

>>> Having the system hang every time a disk dies is, well, less
>>> than optimal.
>>
>> No joke.  It wasn't until even kernel 2.6 that hotplug
>> support was offered, and it still does _not_ work as
>> advertised.

> Hotplug worked just fine on this system when I tested (multiple times) via
> 'mdadm -f -r' and 'mdadm -a'.  It's the actual disk failure handling 
> that's at fault here.