[Discuss] Firewire 800 controller and sbp2

[pw]

Hello,

I have a rather annoying firewire problem
where a system drops all the firewire drives
if they are under a moderate data access load.

My first thought; the problem may be the controller
or possibly the driver. These drives and controller
work fine if accessed one at a time. Interestingly,
if I run file system check on all three drives
simultaneously (using 3 separate TTYs), the
system will drop these drives pretty reliably.

The drives are all connected to separate ports
on the controller card.

When the drives are dropped the listings for the drives
DO NOT disappear from the proc file system.

The system does not autodetect firewire drives
that are attached and then powered. The system automounts
USB devices though. Perhaps this is a kernel deficiency...

I also have to modprobe sbp2 each time I boot the
system. This seems odd since most other systems (same distro)
find the firewire card (same make and model), install sbp2,
and then automount any drives on the card. This is what
leads me to believe the controller card is actually failing.

Can anyone suggest a reliable make and model of
firewire 800 controller card?

I want to see what is working well with other peoples
machines and distros, or if firewire is good/bad by
most peoples experiences.


Peter