Subject: Re: Kern/25659 is not isolated to pcmcia attached drives.
To: Brian Buhrow <buhrow@lothlorien.nfbcal.org>
From: Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
List: tech-kern
Date: 04/22/2005 20:20:12
On Thu, Apr 21, 2005 at 03:29:18PM -0700, Brian Buhrow wrote:
> 	Hello.  Has anyone else noticed that the wdc.c timeouts seem to be
> short enough that attaching drives to NetBSD-2.x systems can be somewhat
> challenging?  Kern/25659 correctly identifies the problem as being in the
> sys/dev/ic/wdc.c file, but it doesn't look like any changes have been made
> to that file in the source trees which reflect the knowledge of this
> problem.  If anything, changes over the past year or so have caused most
> timeouts in this file to shorten considerably.  I've appended what I hope
> is a less hackish patch to this bug in the gnats database, and hope that
> someone with more knowledge than I could address the general problem.  The
> patch I appended makes things work quite well, but I'd be happy to engage
> in a discussion on this topic if it might result in a permanent fix which
> will live on in the sources.

The patch you propose bump various values which are not dependant on the
CPU speed, and are already much larger than what the specs says they should
be. Also the delay(1000000) is unacceptable, because it will wedge the
computer for one second when a drive is attached (which can be from a
removable adapter, so on a multiuser system), and I can't see why it would
change anything at the place where it is.

Did you look at where the exact cause of the problem is ?

-- 
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org>
     NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
--