[Discuss] Firewire 800 controller and sbp2

[taras]

pw wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have a rather annoying firewire problem
> where a system drops all the firewire drives
> if they are under a moderate data access load.
>
> My first thought; the problem may be the controller
> or possibly the driver. These drives and controller
> work fine if accessed one at a time. Interestingly,
> if I run file system check on all three drives
> simultaneously (using 3 separate TTYs), the
> system will drop these drives pretty reliably.
>
> The drives are all connected to separate ports
> on the controller card.
>
> When the drives are dropped the listings for the drives
> DO NOT disappear from the proc file system.
>
> The system does not autodetect firewire drives
> that are attached and then powered. The system automounts
> USB devices though. Perhaps this is a kernel deficiency...
>
> I also have to modprobe sbp2 each time I boot the
> system. This seems odd since most other systems (same distro)
> find the firewire card (same make and model), install sbp2,
> and then automount any drives on the card. This is what
> leads me to believe the controller card is actually failing.
>
> Can anyone suggest a reliable make and model of
> firewire 800 controller card?
I can suggest that you forget about it or be resposible(you'd do that 
for me, wouldn't you sweet pw?) and post parts of your message as a bug 
in kernel bugzilla. As of 2.6.14ish or thereabouts firewire was 
completely useless on linux. I ran into the problems that you described 
with just one drive. Basically after a while of io activity the fw 
system screws itself up and firewire no longer works.
Same setup works fine if a recent 2.4 kernel is used.


>
> I want to see what is working well with other peoples
> machines and distros, or if firewire is good/bad by
> most peoples experiences.
Firewire good. Firewire fast. Linux firewire -> more like Donkeywire. 
And yes I admit, that statement is unfair to donkeys.

Taras