man pages section 7: Device and Network Interfaces

ncrs(7D)

Name

ncrs– SCSI host bus adapter driver

Synopsis

scsi@unit-address

Description

The ncrs host bus adapter driver is a SCSA-compliant nexus driver that supports the LSI Logic (formerly Symbios Logic or NCR) 53C810, 53C810A, 53C815, 53C820, 53C825, 53C825A, 53C860, 53C875, 53C875J, 53C876, and 53C895 SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) chips.

The ncrs driver supports standard functions provided by the SCSA interface, including tagged and untagged queuing, Wide/Fast/Ultra/Ultra2 SCSI, and auto request sense. The ncrs driver does not support linked commands.

PRECONFIGURE

Known Problems and Limitations

The LSI BIOS and the Solaris fdisk program may be incompatible. To avoid problems, you should create an entry in the FDISK partition table using the DOS version of FDISK (or equivalent utility) before installing the Solaris software. To ensure your system will reboot following Solaris installation, create a DOS partition at least 1–cylinder in size that starts at cylinder 0.

Add-in cards containing 53C815, 53C820, 53C825, or 53C825A controllers must be used in bus-mastering PCI slots. PCI slots on dual PCI slot motherboards are generally bus-master capable. However, motherboards that contain three or more PCI slots, or motherboards that feature several embedded PCI controllers may contain PCI slots that are not bus-master capable.

PCI motherboards that feature LSI Logic SDMS BIOS and an embedded 53C810 or 53C810A controller may not be compatible with 53C82x add-in cards equipped with LSI Logic SDMS BIOs. To prevent conflicts, it may be necessary to upgrade the motherboard BIOS, the add-in card, or both.

Early PCI systems that are equipped with an 53C810 motherboard chip may contain unconnected interrupt pins. These systems cannot be used with Solaris software.

Wide-to–narrow target connections are not supported by Solaris software; as a result, you should not attempt to connect wide targets to narrow connectors on any of the supported devices.

If your adapter supports the LSI Logic SCSI configuration utility, the value of the host SCSI ID (found under the Adapter Setup menu) must be set to 7. (You can access the Symbios Logic SCSI configuration utility using Control-C.)

If you experience problems with old target devices, add the following to the /kernel/drv/ncrs.conf file:
```
targetn-scsi-options = 0x0;
```
where n is the ID of the failing target.

If you are using a Conner 1080S narrow SCSI drive, the system may display the following warnings:
WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci1000,f@d (ncrs0): invalid reselection (0,0) WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci1000,f@d/sd@0,0 (sd0); SCSI transport failed: 'reset: retrying command'
To supress these warnings, disable tagged queuing in the ncrs.conf file.

Pentium motherboards (Intel NX chipset) using P90 or slower processors may cause the ncrs driver to hang. If this occurs, the following messages are displayed on the console:
WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci1000,3@6 (ncrs0) Unexpected DMA state:active dstat=c0<DMA-FIFO-empty, master-data-parity-error>
This is an unrecoverable state and the system will not install using the ncrs driver.

The ncrs driver supports the 53C875 chipset Revision 4, or later versions only. Pre-release versions of the chip are not supported.

On rare occasions, use of an SDT7000/SDT9000 tape drive may result in the following message being displayed on the console:
Unexpected DMA state: ACTIVE. dstat=81<DMA-FIFO-empty, illegal-instruction>
After the above message is displayed, the system and tape drive will recover and remain usable.

DRIVER CONFIGURATION

The ncrs host bus adapter driver is configured by defining the properties found in ncrs.conf. Properties in the ncrs.conf file that can be modified by the user include: scsi-options, target<n>-scsi-options, scsi-reset-delay, scsi-tag-age-limit, scsi-watchdog-tick, scsi-initiator-id, and ncrs-iomap. Properties in the ncrs.conf file override global SCSI settings.

The property target<n>-scsi-options overrides the scsi-options property value for target<n>, where <n> can vary from decimal 0 to 15. The ncrs driver supports the following SCSI options: SCSI_OPTIONS_DR(0x8), SCSI_OPTIONS_SYNC(0x20), SCSI_OPTIONS_TAG(0x80), SCSI_OPTIONS_FAST(0x100), SCSI_OPTIONS_WIDE(0x200), SCSI_OPTIONS_FAST20(0x400), and SCSI_OPTIONS_FAST40(0x800).

After periodic interval scsi-watchdog-tick, the ncrs driver searches through all current and disconnected commands for timeouts.

The scsi-tag-age-limit property represents the number of times that the ncrs driver attempts to allocate a tag ID that is currently in use after going through all tag IDs in a circular fashion. When encountering the same tag ID used scsi-tag-age-limit times, no additional commands are submitted to the target until all outstanding commands complete or timeout.

The ncrs-iomap property enables the driver to utilize IO mapping (rather than memory mapping) of registers.

Refer to scsi_hba_attach(9F) for details.

Examples

Example 1 A sample `ncrs` configuration file

Create a file called /kernel/drv/ncrs.conf, then add the following line:

scsi-options=0x78;

The above example disables tagged queuing, Fast/Ultra SCSI, and wide mode for all ncrs instances.

The following example disables an option for one specific ncrs device. See driver.conf(4) and pci(4) for more details.

 name="ncrs" parent="/pci@1f,4000"
	unit-address="3"
	target1-scsi-options=0x58
	scsi-options=0x178 scsi-initiator-id=6;

In the example, the default initiator ID in OBP is 7; the change to ID 6 will occur at attach time. The scsi-options property is set for target 1 to 0x58 and all other targets set to 0x178. Note that it may be preferable to change the initiator ID in OBP.

The physical path name of the parent can be determined using the /devices tree or by following the link of the logical device name:

 # ls -l /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0
 lrwxrwxrwx  1 root   root      45 May 16 10:08 /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0 ->
	. . / . . /devices/pci@1f,4000/scsi@3/sd@0,0:a,raw

In the example above, the parent is /pci@1f,4000 and the unit-address is the number bound to the scsi@3 node.

To set scsi-options more specifically per target, do the following:

		target1-scsi-options=0x78;
device-type-scsi-options-list =
"SEAGATE ST32550W", "seagate-scsi-options" ;
seagate-scsi-options = 0x58;
scsi-options=0x3f8;

With the exception of one specific disk type that has scsi-options set to 0x58, the example above sets scsi-options for target 1 to 0x78 and all other targets to 0x3f8.

The scsi-options properties that are specified per target ID have the highest precedence, followed by scsi-options per device type. Global scsi-options (for all ncrs instances) per bus have the lowest precedence.

To turn on IO mapping for all ncrs cards in the system, do the following:

ncrs-iomap=1;

The above action will noticeably slow the performance of the driver. You must reboot the system for the specified scsi-options to take effect.

Driver Capabilities

To enable some driver features, the target driver must set capabilities in the ncrs driver. The following capabilities can be queried and modified by the target driver: synchronous, tagged-qing, wide-xfer, auto-rqsense, qfull-retries, and qfull-retry-interval. All other capabilities are query only.

The tagged-qing, auto-rqsense, wide-xfer, disconnect, and Ultra/Ultra2 synchronous capabilities are enabled by default, and can be assigned binary (0 or 1) values only. The default value for qfull-retries is 10, while the default value for qfull-retry-interval is 100. The qfull-retries capability is a uchar_t (0 to 255), while qfull-retry-interval is a ushort_t (0 to 65535).

If a conflict exists between the value of scsi-options and a capability, the value set in scsi-options prevails. Only whom != 0 is supported in the scsi_ifsetcap(9F) call. Refer to scsi_ifsetcap(9F) and scsi_ifgetcap(9F) for details.

The ncrs host bus adapter driver also supports hotplugging of targets using the cfgadm tool. Hotplug operations on the SCSI bus that hosts the root partition should not be performed. See the cfgadm(1M) man page for more information.

Files

/kernel/drv/ncrs: ELF kernel module
/kernel/drv/ncrs.conf: Optional configuration file

Attributes

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attribute:

ATTRIBUTE TYPE	ATTRIBUTE VALUE
Architecture	Limited to PCI-based systems with Symbios 53C810, 53C810A, 53C815, 53C820, 53C825, 53C825A, 53C860, 53C875, 53C875J, 53C876, and 53C895 SCSI I/O processors.

Diagnostics

The messages described below are logged and may also appear on the system console.

Device is using a hilevel intr

The device was configured with an interrupt level that cannot be used with this ncrs driver. Check the PCI device.

map setup failed

The driver was unable to map device registers; check for bad hardware. Driver did not attach to device; SCSI devices will be inaccessible.

glm_script_alloc failed

The driver was unable to load the SCRIPTS for the SCSI processor; check for bad hardware. Driver did not attach to device; SCSI devices will be inaccessible.

cannot map configuration space

The driver was unable to map in the configuration registers. Check for bad hardware. SCSI devices will be inaccessible

attach failed

The driver was unable to attach; usually preceded by another warning that indicates why attach failed. These can be considered hardware failures.

SCSI bus DATA IN phase parity error

The driver detected parity errors on the SCSI bus.

SCSI bus MESSAGE IN phase parity error

The driver detected parity errors on the SCSI bus.

SCSI bus STATUS phase parity error

The driver detected parity errors on the SCSI bus.

Unexpected bus free

Target disconnected from the bus without notice. Check for bad hardware.

Disconnected command timeout for Target <id>.<lun>

A timeout occurred while target id/lun was disconnected. This is usually a target firmware problem. For tagged queuing targets, <n> commands were outstanding when the timeout was detected.

Disconnected tagged cmd(s) (<n>) timeout for Target <id>.<lun>

A timeout occurred while target id/lun was disconnected. This is usually a target firmware problem. For tagged queuing targets, <n> commands were outstanding when the timeout was detected.

Connected command timeout for Target <id>.<lun>

This is usually a SCSI bus problem. Check cables and termination.

Target <id> reducing sync. transfer rate

A data transfer hang or DATA-IN phase parity error was detected. The driver attempts to eliminate this problem by reducing the data transfer rate.

Target <id> reverting to async. mode

A second data transfer hang was detected for this target. The driver attempts to eliminate this problem by reducing the data transfer rate.

Target <id> disabled wide SCSI mode

A second data phase hang was detected for this target. The driver attempts to eliminate this problem by disabling wide SCSI mode.

auto request sense failed

An attempt to start an auto request packet failed. Another auto request packet may already be in transport.

invalid reselection (<id>.<lun>)

A reselection failed; target accepted abort or reset, but still tries to reconnect. Check for bad hardware.

invalid intcode

The SCRIPTS processor generated an invalid SCRIPTS interrupt. Check for bad hardware.

Notes

The ncrs hardware (53C875) supports Wide, Fast, and Ultra SCSI mode. The maximum SCSI bandwidth is 40 MB/sec.

The ncrs hardware (53C895) supports Wide, Fast, Ultra and Ultra2 SCSI mode using a LVD bus. The maximum SCSI bandwidth is 80 MB/second.

The ncrs driver exports properties indicating the negotiated transfer speed per target (target<n>-sync-speed), whether wide bus is supported (target<n>-wide) for that particular target (target<n>-scsi-options), and whether tagged queuing has been enabled (target<n>-TQ). The sync-speed property value indicates the data transfer rate in KB/sec. The target<n>-TQ and the target<n>-wide property have value 1 (to indicate that the corresponding capability is enabled for that target), or 0 (to indicate that the capability is disabled for that targe). See prtconf(1M) (verbose option) for details on viewing the ncrs properties.

scsi, instance #0
    Driver properties:
        name <target6-TQ> length <4>
            value <0x00000000>.
        name <target6-wide>  length <4>
            value <0x00000000>.
        name <target6-sync-speed>  length <4>
            value <0x00002710>.
        name <target1-TQ>  length <4>
            value <0x00000001>.
        name <target1-wide>  length <4>
            value <0x00000000>.
        name <target1-sync-speed>  length <4>
            value <0x00002710>.
        name <target0-TQ>  length <4>
            value <0x00000001>.
        name <target0-wide>  length <4>
            value <0x00000001>.
        name <target0-sync-speed>  length <4>
            value <0x00009c40>.
        name <scsi-options>  length <4>
            value <0x000007f8>.
        name <scsi-watchdog-tick>  length <4>
            value <0x0000000a>.
        name <scsi-tag-age-limit>  length <4>
            value <0x00000002>.
        name <scsi-reset-delay>  length <4>
            value <0x00000bb8>.
        name <latency-timer>  length <4>
            value <0x00000088>.
        name <cache-line-size>  length <4>
            value <0x00000010>.

SunOS 5.10 Last Revised 10 Oct 2000

ncrs(7D)

Name

Synopsis

Description

PRECONFIGURE

Known Problems and Limitations

DRIVER CONFIGURATION

Examples

Example 1 A sample ncrs configuration file

Driver Capabilities

Files

Attributes

See Also

Diagnostics

Notes

Example 1 A sample `ncrs` configuration file