Re: 2.4.18 IDE channels block each other under load?

[Aniket Malatpure]

Hi

In the IDE Protocol, only 1 DMA transfer can take place on the bus at
one time.
So if the IDE  bus is busy doing the DMA transfer for 1 drive, the other
drive cannot receive any commands.

I guess what does happen is that the IDE driver in the kernel doesnt
distribute commands in a "fair" manner between drive 0 & drive 1. If it
receives commands for drive 0, it keeps sending those commands to the
drive 0, one after the other, without checking if there is a command for
drive 1.

A driver distributing commands in a "fair" manner would send 1 command
to drive 0, check if there is a command for drive 1, if there is, it
would send a command to drive 1, then send the next command to drive 0
and so on...

The above is a guess...would anyone care to verify?

Thanks
Aniket

Taavo Raykoff wrote:
> 
> Can someone tell me what is going on here?
> 
> dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1024 count=1000000
> 
> then in another vt:
> fdisk /dev/hdc, then immediately press "q".
> 
> fdisk "hangs" for a long, long time.
> ps -aux says state of dd and fdisk are both "D"
> strace says fdisk is hanging on the close()
> /proc/interrupts tell me that ide1 (/dev/hdc) is getting no
>  int activity for a long, long time. ide0 is very busy.
> 
> It is not just dd/fdisk.  Any intensive writes on one IDE
> channel (direct to the hd? device) seem to block any IO on
> the other device.
> 
> Intel SAI2 MB, ServerWorks IDE chipset, 2.4.18, two IDE
> hard drives /dev/hda and /dev/hdc, 1024MB RAM, RH73 kernel
> build.
> 
> Also seen on Promise PDCx IDE controllers hanging off the PCI.
> 
> hdparm settings appear to have no influence on this behavior.
> 
> Thanks,
> TR.
> 
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