Kernel: 2.4.3-11smp System: Compaq IA64 Pilot-4 M01(05/22/2001) 2 800Mhz/4MB C0 processors 8GB RAM ROC is boot contoller SmartArray 5300 in slot 2 w/4 logical drives (16GB, 214GB, 180GB, 80GB) The system locks up within 2 minutes when trying to create ext2 filesystems on all 4 logical drives simultaneously. Use this script: for d in 0 1 2 3 ; do mke2fs /dev/cciss/c0d${d}p1 & done A system running a 2.4.5 kernel does not lock up in this manner.
1) How much memory does the machine have? 2) Locks up -> hard lock (eg no keyboard leds etc) ??
Did you happen to fill up the SWIOTLB, and panic it that way? I could certainly see 4 simultaneous mke2fs's doing this.
New Info. The system doesn't actually lock up. It finishes th tasks, but takes an extremely long time and during this time, the system is no responsive. This problems seems to be affected by memory. The more memory, the worse the problem. We have seen this problem with 1GB and 6GB. This was reproduced on SCSI and array.
This defect considered MUST-FIX for Fairfax gold-release.
Does this perform any better under the 2.4.7 kernel?
arjan: http://uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0108.2/1270.html related?
yes; we fixed this before, then Linus unfixed it again.... sigh