*BSD News Article 13497


Return to BSD News archive

Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!constellation!convex!convex!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!pipex!sunic!isgate!veda.is!adam
From: adam@veda.is (Adam David)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.bugs
Subject: Re: PROBLEMS WITH PATCHKIT 0.2.2 - Advice/help needed :-(
Message-ID: <C4KFHw.81z@veda.is>
Date: 27 Mar 93 20:56:19 GMT
References: <C4BLJ8.GA5@ns1.nodak.edu> <1993Mar26.201921.28420@cs.wisc.edu>
Organization: Veda Systems, Iceland
Lines: 31

jcargill@oka.cs.wisc.edu (Jon Cargille) writes:

>This sounds like a slight variant of a hardware problem.  This
>occurs on motherboards which do not invalidate the cache correctly.

>Unfortunately, since this is a hardware problem, none of your options
>are very attractive.  You can:
>	(1) put up with rebooting, and don't ever count on having a
>	     reliable system
>	(2) buy a new motherboard
>	(3) buy a less-smart SCSI controller.  Are any non-DMA SCSI
>            controllers supported by Julians drivers yet?

4) disable the external cache in the BIOS setup
5) flag SCSI buffers as non-cacheable in 386bsd

>I'm amazed that your system would be as stable as you say it is given
>the severity of the motherboard problem...

My motherboard has this problem too. I'm amazed that the system stayed up
for 10 days until yesterday (when a long line received via telnet froze
everything and I had to reboot).

>Now *THAT* I find puzzling.  Shouldn't Linux and SCO also have
>problems with a motherboard that doesn't invalidate the cache
>correctly?

Maybe they use uncacheable buffers.

--
Adam David (adam@veda.is)