[CentOS] CentOS 5 + Nforce 4 SLI Intel SATA problems

Fri May 4 03:43:58 UTC 2007
Varian <varian at vhdesigns.com>

I've been having an extremely hard time using the on board SATA 
controller on my nvidia based board. I have two 160gig Maxtor SATA 
drives attached to the on board controller, setup as software raid0. The 
problem is the array is extremely unreliable, where I'm getting constant 
I/O errors like:

sd 0:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x00040000
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 20010007
sd 0:0:0:0: SCSI error: return code = 0x00040000
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 20010000

I've wiped and scanned the drives with the Maxtor diagnostic utilities 
which passes both drives with flying colors. I've had no issues when i 
was doing the same thing with Suse 10.1, the same setup was 100% 
reliable. I also have two 160gig Maxtor ATA133 drive in the machine on 
the on board PATA controller and they work totally reliable. I'm 
wondering if anyone else is having a problem with on board nvidia sata 
controller thats part of the nforce4 chipset?
btw its using the sata_nv driver. Also when I reboot it works fine for a 
few hours and then begins to act up again. Its not a heat problem, the 
drives have a working fan directly blowing on the drives, and the case 
its in has very good airflow.



ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x9F0 ctl 0xBF2 bmdma 0xD000 irq 193
ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x970 ctl 0xB72 bmdma 0xD008 irq 193
scsi0 : sata_nv
ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
ata1.00: ATA-7, max UDMA/133, 320173056 sectors: LBA48
ata1.00: ata1: dev 0 multi count 16
ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
scsi1 : sata_nv
ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
ata2.00: ATA-7, max UDMA/133, 320173056 sectors: LBA48
ata2.00: ata2: dev 0 multi count 16
ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133
  Vendor: ATA       Model: Maxtor 6Y160M0    Rev: YAR5
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 05
SCSI device sda: 320173056 512-byte hdwr sectors (163929 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
SCSI device sda: 320173056 512-byte hdwr sectors (163929 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
 sda: sda1
sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda
  Vendor: ATA       Model: Maxtor 6Y160M0    Rev: YAR5
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 05
SCSI device sdb: 320173056 512-byte hdwr sectors (163929 MB)
sdb: Write Protect is off
sdb: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sdb: drive cache: write back
SCSI device sdb: 320173056 512-byte hdwr sectors (163929 MB)
sdb: Write Protect is off
sdb: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sdb: drive cache: write back
 sdb:
sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sdb
ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [APSJ] enabled at IRQ 22
GSI 17 sharing vector 0xC9 and IRQ 17
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:11.0[A] -> Link [APSJ] -> GSI 22 (level, 
low) -> IRQ 201
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:11.0 to 64
ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x9E0 ctl 0xBE2 bmdma 0xE400 irq 201
ata4: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x960 ctl 0xB62 bmdma 0xE408 irq 201
scsi2 : sata_nv
ata3: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
scsi3 : sata_nv
ata4: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)


Varian