SureStore 2600fx and linux

[Lawrence Staberg]

I've plugged a 2600fx to my RH 7.3 system, with an adaptec 7892 Ultra160.
I used fdisk to place a linux partition on the media and can access the media without a noticable problem until I do large IO's to the device. ie: copy a 300MB file to the MO.
The whole system hangs as both the hard drive and MO are on the same scsi controller..
Anyone have an idea what's wrong..??

[Vincent Fleming]

Oh boy, it could be lots of things.

Here's a link the the manual for the device:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/lpg28562/lpg28562.pdf

It has some troubleshooting suggestions.

Does Red Hat support the device? (it could be a driver problem) We don't have any specific support (that I can find) of Linux with the 2600fx. Just HP-UX and Windows, netware, and tru64.

What mode are you running it in?

-Vince

[Eugeny Brychkov · Accepted solution]

Lawrence,
as soon as SCSI controller is U160 I guess it's LVD. I also believe that your hard disk attached is LVD also.
But be sure that 2600fx optical drive is Narrow SE. So putting this device onto the SCSI bus will force whole bus to become SE (5mb/s, 6 meters cable max). This SE mode, although, should work, but is not native for SCSI controller and hard disk.
So please move this MO drive to another controller. Look ak HP recommended ones (altough for tapes, but the same for MOs): http://www.hp.com/cposupport/information_storage/support_doc/lpg50063.html
And then we'll see if it will solve your problem
Eugeny

[Lawrence Staberg]

Added a separate 7892 card and experienced the same behavior..

I don't receive any disk errors, I'm able to copy a 500MB iso file from disk to optical, but my load average goes from 1 to +10 and the desktop is locked out for minutes at a time. The file transfer takes upwards of 5 minutes.. Although a read, ie: md5sum of the file takes many minutes, the desktop does not hang and the load average only goes up to ~1.4.
A md5sum on both iso files checks out indicating I'm getting a complete transfer...

I will play with the termination and see if that's a possibility.

[Eugeny Brychkov]

You can also try to upgrade SCSI and system BIOSes. And play with SCSI setup. I guess DMA mode will not work with MO...
I believe if you'll find anywhere card 'Adaptec 2940UW' (or equivalent) and will try it that will be great deal. Adaptec 7892 chip is a little complicated for 2600fx ;o)
Eugeny

[Vincent Fleming]

It looks like I put in the wrong link... here's a better one: http://h20015.www2.hp.com/en/manualCategory.jhtml?lc=en&pagetype=manual&prodId=hp2600fxop12355&sw_lang=en

This link:
http://h20015.www2.hp.com/en/document.jhtml?lc=en&docName=lpg70064&prodId=hp2600fxop12355

talks about a performance problem related to the AHA-29160 Adaptec U160 adapter and the 2600fx... perhaps Eugeny is on to something with the suggestion of using an older and slower adapter.

Although, from my calculations, you're doing about 1.66MB/s to the device, which isn't so bad... but then again, I don't know what it's rated for.

Looking up some specs on the product, I notice it says it has a 1024-byte blocksize. Unix boxes (as well as Windows) always use a 512-byte blocksize. Be sure you use 1024-byte or a multiple of 1024-bytes as a blocksize.

Good luck,

Vince