Hardware RAID problem with NetBSD 5?

[John Klos <john%ziaspace.com@localhost>]

Hi,

I'm not sure if this a problem with the motherboard I'm using or with 
NetBSD, but here goes anyway. I have an MSI MS-7511 amd64 motherboard 
which has a form of hardware RAID on the motherboard. However, after using 
it for a few minutes, the machine locks up HARD. I can't get into the 
debugger, I can't get any sort of activity, and even the reset button 
doesn't work!

It makes me think that perhaps the system disables the reset so that 
writes which need to go out don't get interrupted the very instant that 
the reset button is pushed, but if that's the case this would be the first 
time I've seen anything like this on an x86 system.

If I set the SATA controller to AHCI mode in the BIOS, the system can run 
for days. If set to RAID (I'm simply mirroring two 1 TB drives), it might 
finish a newfs and untargzip a set, but never all of them.

The drives show up as wd* even when they're configured in a mirror:

ahcisata0 port 2: device present, speed: 1.5Gb/s
ahcisata0 port 4: device present, speed: 3.0Gb/s
ahcisata0 port 5: device present, speed: 3.0Gb/s
wd0 at atabus3 drive 0: <ST380815AS N>
wd0: drive supports 16-sector PIO transfers, LBA48 addressing
wd0: 78167 MB, 158816 cyl, 16 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 160086528 sectors
wd0: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 6 (Ultra/133)
wd0(ahcisata0:2:0): using PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 6 (Ultra/133) 
(using DMA)
wd1 at atabus5 drive 0: <ST31000340NS>
wd1: drive supports 16-sector PIO transfers, LBA48 addressing
wd1: 931 GB, 1938021 cyl, 16 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 1953525168 sectors
wd1: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 6 (Ultra/133)
wd1(ahcisata0:4:0): using PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 6 (Ultra/133) 
(using DMA)
wd2 at atabus6 drive 0: <ST31000340NS>
wd2: drive supports 16-sector PIO transfers, LBA48 addressing
wd2: 931 GB, 1938021 cyl, 16 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 1953525168 sectors
wd2: drive supports PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 6 (Ultra/133)
wd2(ahcisata0:5:0): using PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2, Ultra-DMA mode 6 (Ultra/133) 
(using DMA)
...
ataraid0: found 1 RAID volume
ld0 at ataraid0 vendtype 3 unit 0: nVidia ATA RAID-1 array
ld0: 931 GB, 121601 cyl, 255 head, 63 sec, 512 bytes/sect x 1953525120 
sectors
opendisk: can't open dev wd1 (16)
opendisk: can't open dev wd2 (16)
opendisk: can't open dev wd1 (16)
opendisk: can't open dev wd2 (16)
opendisk: can't open dev wd1 (16)
opendisk: can't open dev wd2 (16)
...

wd0 in this boot is another disk which isn't configured as part of any 
RAID.

Strange... Does anyone have any ideas? Has anyone seen behaviour like 
this, particularly the reset button getting disabled?

Thanks,
John