On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 01:38:38PM -0400, Mark Lord wrote:

This all *used* to work with sata_mv.
But I also recently noticed my sata_mv cards no longer
work with the 4-port Marvell PMP here, and that combo
definitely did work when I finished with it all
(back around 2.6.29 or so).

Since sata_mv itself hasn't changed (much) since then,
the problem is likely in the libata core somewhere.
I'd guess that maybe in the reset/probe code.

I'm rather distracted here right now with broken internet connectivity,
and hunting for new providers etc., so not likely to dig around on it.

Perhaps Marc MERLIN could retest with an older kernel,

Well, I don't know what to say.

A friend lent me another sata_mv card and just to get another baseline I
tried my original card again, and it just started working.
Yet, I tried it 4 different times before, moved it from one slot to the
other one, changed the sata cables just in case, and nothing would help.

The one thing I did since last time, however, was to update the motherboard
bios.
I'm now wondering if that did not solve some subtle problem which was
causing issues with the sata_mv card and not the sata_sil24.

So it seems it was a false alarm after all, I'll report back if I have
problems again, but it looks like it's working solidly and for what it's
worth with 5 drives and software raid 5, I can both read and write files
at about 115MB/s, which isn't too shabby :)

Marc
-- 
"A mouse is a device used to point at the xterm you want to type in" - A.S.R.
Microsoft is to operating systems ....
                                      .... what McDonalds is to gourmet cooking
Home page: http://marc.merlins.org/