Re: [9fans] venti+fossil woes

[Christopher Nielsen <cnielsen@pobox.com>]

On Tue, Nov 18, 2003 at 03:59:15PM -0800, Geoff Collyer wrote:
> Wow, your irqalloc output is already sorted; I have to sort mine by
> hand.

Well, it was transcribed by hand, but it was transcribed
exactly as I saw it.

> It seems odd that sdC doesn't show up (at irq 14).

When you consider that there isn't a drive on sdC, it's
not so odd.

> I only have one CPU server with IDE disk(s), but its irqs look like this:
>
> ; sort +1nb  '#P/irqalloc'
>           3           0 debugpt
>           7           0 mathemu
>           8           0 doublefault
>           9           0 mathover
>          14           0 fault386
>          16           0 matherror
>          32           0 clock
>          33           1 kbd
>          38           6 floppy
>          42          10 ether1
>          44          12 ether0
>          46          14 sdC (ata)
>          47          15 sdD (ata)
>
> You've got sdE and sdF sharing irq 9 and usb0 and ether0 sharing irq
> 11 (yet irqs 10 and 12 are unused).  This could be due to a buggy BIOS
> (I've got a few of those), but more likely your BIOS is running out of
> irqs that it knows to be free and thus doubles up devices.  It would
> be worthwhile to go into BIOS setup and disable any devices you aren't
> using, to reclaim their IRQs.  Also visit your PCI/PNP assignment
> screen and let PCI/PNP have all free irqs, or turn off manual
> selection of free irqs.

sdE and sdF are where all the drives doing all the i/o
are living, so it's no wonder there are problems, since
they're all sharing an interrupt.

Unfortunately, the BIOS setup for this particular machine
(an old Dell optiplex) seems mostly neutered. You can't do
anything you describe. Considering it's a Dell, I am leaning
very heavily toward buggy BIOS. I have an extra case and
(decent) motherboard that I can moves the entire system to,
so I think I will try that and see if I get more reasonable
behavior.

Never send a desktop to do a server's work. *sigh*

> On a CPU server, you can probably disable all LPT (parallel) ports at
> irqs 5 and 7, COM2 (second serial port) at irq 3, and PS/2 mouse at
> irq 12.  If you're not using USB, don't assign it an irq.  If there's
> an option to assign your vga card an irq, disable it.  I'm not sure
> what's sitting on irq 10; maybe vga.  Make sure your first IDE
> controller is enabled (in your `integrated peripherals' screen); it
> should appear at irq 14.

Yeah, I usually disable any devices that I have no use for
on a server system, pretty much including everything you've
listed.

Thanks!

--
Christopher Nielsen
"They who can give up essential liberty for temporary
safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin