Re: [twit] Re: [SLUG] What SCSI Card to buy?

From: herrold (herrold@owlriver.com)
Date: Tue Oct 16 2001 - 14:34:40 EDT


On Tue, 16 Oct 2001, Bryan-TheBS-Smith wrote:

> Secondly, 7 years of trying to use Adaptec on Linux has me saying
> "anything but Adaptec" (since 2000). One kernel and driver will
> work here, another won't here. Adaptec doesn't seem to test its own
> drivers against different firmware releases -- especially Ultra+
> speeds cards where I've had fits (the older 2940 and 2902/2906 cards
> with only FastNarrow *DO* seem to work good).

I did not offer an opinion earlier; I will now. Adaptec controllers
are fine by me. So are Symbios (Sun uses their line on the high).
I have not experienced SCSI I/O R/W bandwidth as a limiting factor
-- I hit lan or RAM or processor speed bottlenecks first.

The Adaptec's also work _well_. I installed one this week, and one
last week, and have installed nothing _bought NEW_ except Adaptec in
Linux installs this year, with no issues. It is easy to criticize
with google at hand. Heck, I do it myself <smile>, but usually over
on the -politics list.

... I speak as a person who worked with Linux' SCSI drivers since
the 1.2.13 days, and spent the entire RH 7.1 non-public beta test
cycle testing older Adaptec cards up to the 160MHz bus transfer
latest and greatest. Two main trees of aic-7xxx drivers exist in
Linux. It remains an area of the kernel with ongoing -AC 'commits'
on a regular basis, fixing the 'corner cases.'

There is a full-time staffer at RH ( dledford@redhat.com ), and two
at Adaptec (one the FreeBSD driver maintainer), specifically working
through compatability issues. As I recall there are 19 major
variants among their entire product line; I test heavily on the HP
and Dell OEM lines with a line ranging from old Netserver LM 4/66
(yes - 486-66MHz) on ... I run a standing query category
specifically on open Bugzilla items on this driver; I have 34 open
showing at the moment on over 200 filed; 15 that I specifically was
in the resolution of. Extreme load, and multiple controllers in a
single chassis are about all that have open issues just now.

Don't see ANY bugs filed from the poster quoted. Only see an RFE
and a bug fixed in Rawhide, on other areas.

Adaptec hardware works fine in Linux; it is actively maintained and
supported by the kernel maintainers, Adaptec, and Red Hat.

-- Russ



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