Ubuntu let me down tonight
Submitted by menglert on July 10, 2008 - 00:12.
So, i go to upgrade my ubuntu file server to 8.04 (as it is the next lts), only to find a very odd problem: the kernel it ships with was compiled with is limited to reconizing no more than 8 IDE drives in a system. (thanks to this CONFIG_IDE_MAX_HWIFS=8.) This might be 'ok' for a desktop, but for a server kernel this seamed crazy. so, off to google where i found many bug reports where users could not boot because there primary master, or CD drive was one to many ide devices. the crazy thing is that these bug reports date back for years and have been marked as "wishlist" or will not do. for someone who currently has 3 times the 'limit' of ide disks, (witch worked fine in 6.06) this will turn me off ubuntu for a while.
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That stinks
That's really troubling, actually, and you've got to wonder how seriously the Ubuntu management wants to their server products to be taken with that kind of limitation on a server-OS. It definitely lumps them into the "small enterprise or low-storage" category.
I was speaking to Robyn the other day about the way that 8.04 feels "rushed", and echoing sentiments about having at least let it wait for FireFox 3.0 and a properly useable KDE 4.x - this kind of thing would have caused delays, but would have contributed to the power, usefulness, and stability of the product as a whole. More and more though it seems like the instability and lack of polish isn't just in third party applications included, but goes all the way through the shipped OS.
Were there any kernel-recompiles made by people outside the Ubuntu dev community that would add in support for the extra drives? As it was available in 6.06, I can't imagine the basic functionality is that far from available..
lots of reading later
I did a bit of reading at work and found that the change is the default for the *new* kernel driver option. (that is, this is not ubuntu specific.) more interesting is that previously the module had been set to it's max of 10 controllers (20 drives.) also empty controllers counted to this count (there is a very small, but vocal group of people who can't boot because empty controllers full up the allowance before there disk/cdrom)
I was quite surprised to find out that there was a limit to the number of controllers & that my file server had been running at that limit. (I am quite glad i did not build my 2nd configurations, witch had had 12 controllers, 21 drives)
Personally i had always thought of linux as being flexible and free of seemingly arbratraty limits, but this has put that view into doubt. 4 controllers is not hard to hit, especially with cheap sata controllers that represent themselves as IDE.
I am (working on) compiling a kernel that will up the max controller count back to 10.
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Matt Englert
P.S. I have (so far) resisted reading the module source code to see where this 10 controller limit comes from.
I'm surprised you're not
I'm surprised you're not thinking about using Solaris now, since you have a perfect opportunity to switch.
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Josh Gaber
That's dangerous! In the butt!
almost
my file server is also my myth-backed. there is no Solaris love for myth. :(
I now have a kernel that allows me to see all the controllers, maintainability will be the issue long-term...
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Matt Englert
You could probably install
You could probably install the latest Ubuntu kernel from a previous release with support for more IDE drives, it should have support at least in the short term. Otherwise, once you build a customer kernel and package it as a deb it should be pretty simple to keep up to date.
Or perhaps Debian builds a kernel which you can install?
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Andrew