Re: port-i386/43252: SiI 3512A SATA disks unreliable if used for software raid

[Rainer Glaschick <rg%g-pb.de@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR port-i386/43252; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Rainer Glaschick <rg%g-pb.de@localhost>
To: gnats-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost
Cc: 
Subject: Re: port-i386/43252: SiI 3512A SATA disks unreliable if used for
 software raid
Date: Fri, 7 May 2010 20:35:55 +0200 (CEST)

 I have tried the same procedure with 5.02, which fails to install at 
 all, as sysinst clears the disklabel during installation and 
 consequently cannot make the file system; in detail:
 
 I created a RAID1 on wd0a and wd1a, with identical disklabels, partition a 
 starting on offset 63, size 2927634192 sectors, i.e. 1.5 TByte each. 
 There is also a "b" swap partion of 1.3 GB (2642913 sectors) starting 
 behind the "a" partition.
 
 With raidctl, I initialized the raid0 device successfully (12hrs), then, 
 to be sure, created a disklabel for the whole disk (2927634048 sectors), 
 and called 'newfs /dev/raid0a', which took about 6hrs and succeded.
 
 Then I went back into sysinstall, selected raid0, reuse existing sizes. 
 sysinstall reported a nice disklabel, 1429507 MB in partitions raid0a, 
 raid0c, raid0d, with FFSv1 in raid0a.
 Did not change anything, just acknowledged.
 Last chance yes, and sysinstall reports:
 
 Status: Command failed
 Command: /sbin/newfs -V2 -O 1 -b 16384 -f 2048 /dev/rraid0a
 newfs: /dev/rraid0a partition is unavailable
 
 This is true, as disklabel now reports an empty disklabel.
 Can be repeated by deleting the disklabel, creating a new one,
 and going to sysinit again.
 
 When I say I want to set the sizes, the screen reads like this:
 
     MB        Cylinders    Sectors     Filesystem
   210(4294299653        420    430080 + /
     0               0          0     swap (and tmp, /usr, /var, /home)
   Add user defined partition
   Change input units
   Reduce partition sizes by 667853 MB (1367763328 sectors)
 
 which looks fairly dubious for me.
 As I could continue, I changed the size in the first line to 1429500MB, and 
get:
 
     MB         Cylinders   Sectors   Filesystem
   4294299645      42936319932927617024   /
 ...
   Accept partition sizes. Free space 8 MB, 13 free partitions.
 
 Same display (now 1429499 MB size), and if I go on,
 the disklabel is empty again.
 
 Thus, I cannot install FreeBSD 5.0.2 on a Raid1 frame with two 1.5 TB SATA 
 disks.
 
 Next, I will try again with FreeBSD 5.1 RC1, but with 150GB instead of 
 1500GB for the RAID.