I agree with you that it doesn't seem to make sense to have the delay time between spinup initiation and assembly stage to be fixed irrespective of disks. Hopefully adjust the timeout will fix it, but something does seem wrong with the way this is currently architected. I am very sure there are no BIOS options to spin up the disks, either staggered or all at once. I have an adaptec 1430SA, plus two SI3132 based serial ATA controllers. The BIOS of all the cards has no such option, though the motherboard ports I do believe obey the motherboard BIOS disk delay parameter. And I know the Adaptec controller and the SI 3132 BIOS does not support port multipliers - they only "see" the disk on port 0 of the PMP, not the other 4. So since it only sees one disk, I do not believe that it is possible for it to spin the other guys up. The only code that understands PMP's are there is libata, so if staggered spinup or group spinup (2 or 3 at a time) is to be implemented, it would have to be done in the libata code. The only thing that happens now is spinup during the hotplug sequence, and even thenj it's not explicitly sttable - I couldn't do simultaneous spinup even if I wanted too. It would be good if the software raid configuration that libata does would have these same capabilities for controlling spinup and other items that hardware raid controllers do. After all, software raid should be able to be much more flexible and configurable than a hardware raid controller. If I'm offtrack here, I'd love to be proven wrong, but I've built software raid basd NAS's for 3 years now, and have always seen the process work as I've described it. thx mike ----- Original Message ---- From: Brian K. White <brian@aljex.com> To: opensuse@opensuse.org Sent: Sunday, August 31, 2008 7:35:58 PM Subject: Re: [opensuse] Opensuse doesn't wait long enough for the disks to spin up before trrying to configure raid ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Myers" <mikesm559@yahoo.com> To: <opensuse@opensuse.org> Sent: Saturday, August 30, 2008 3:31 PM Subject: Re: [opensuse] Opensuse doesn't wait long enough for the disks to spin up before trrying to configure raid

I don't think that's going to fix it. The way the libata driver works is that it spins the disks up one at a time (staggered spinup). Just powering the system on will not cause the disks to spin up. After the start of the boot, / is mounted and the sata driver begins doing all of it's work, finding the PMP's on the SATA ports, and then probing each PMP, id'ing the disks and spinning them up, etc... So this is all happening way after the boot is started.

Every piece of hardware I ever saw spun the disks up on it's own, and that includes lots of scsi and sata and sas raid arrays, including the use of sata port expanders/multiplexers. Usually the bios involved (maybe a raid card, maybe a motherboard) offers an option to stagger the spinup, configureable seconds between disks, or configurable seconds between sets of N(configurable) disks at once, configurable seconds to wait in total, or all of the above. Then libata will find every disk ready to go on the first try and that whole sequence should shoot through fast and not screw up md mounting. However I do think the way you are trying to fix it is the more correct fix. The assmbly and mount stages should obviously block until the spinup stage is done, and the spinup stage should obviously have a timeout per disk and no fixed total timeout. However-However... Even IF the raid card and mb offer no way to avoid starting all disks at once, a box like that should probably have a dual or triple redundant, hot-swap power supply anyways. (you bought 18 hot swap disks but only a plain jane single not-hot-swap ps?) It might be too much for one power supply to spin up all at once, but as long as you have both plugged in and both work, then no problem. You're only vulnerable when one ps dies until you get it's replacement in. And since they're hot swap, you can have the spare sitting there on hand already and pop it in immediately. -- Brian K. White brian@aljex.com http://www.myspace.com/KEYofR +++++[>+++[>+++++>+++++++<<-]<-]>>+.>.+++++.+++++++.-.[>+<---]>++. filePro BBx Linux SCO FreeBSD #callahans Satriani Filk! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org