PERC 5i troubles on Dell PE 2950

[Andrew Moise]

  Hello all,
  I've just installed Debian sarge (with a 2.6.16 kernel) on a Dell PE
2950, and initially I got intermittent SCSI warnings under heavy write
load (these that follow I saw while making a filesystem):

Oct  2 14:36:01 localhost kernel: sd 0:2:1:0: megasas: RESET -55455 cmd=2a
Oct  2 14:36:01 localhost kernel: megasas: reset successful
Oct  2 14:36:31 localhost kernel: sd 0:2:1:0: megasas: RESET -70369 cmd=2a
Oct  2 14:36:31 localhost kernel: megasas: reset successful
Oct  2 14:37:02 localhost kernel: sd 0:2:1:0: megasas: RESET -83487 cmd=2a
Oct  2 14:37:02 localhost kernel: megasas: reset successful
Oct  2 14:37:32 localhost kernel: sd 0:2:1:0: megasas: RESET -95079 cmd=2a
Oct  2 14:37:32 localhost kernel: megasas: reset successful
Oct  2 14:38:02 localhost kernel: sd 0:2:1:0: megasas: RESET -105361 cmd=2a
Oct  2 14:38:02 localhost kernel: megasas: reset successful
Oct  2 14:38:33 localhost kernel: sd 0:2:1:0: megasas: RESET -115613 cmd=2a
Oct  2 14:38:33 localhost kernel: megasas: reset successful
Oct  2 14:38:33 localhost kernel: sd 0:2:1:0: SCSI error: return code
= 0x6000000
Oct  2 14:38:33 localhost kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev sdb,
sector 2927091007
Oct  2 14:38:33 localhost kernel: Buffer I/O error on device sdb1,
logical block 731772736
Oct  2 14:38:33 localhost kernel: lost page write due to I/O error on sdb1
Oct  2 14:39:03 localhost kernel: sd 0:2:1:0: megasas: RESET -125667 cmd=2a
Oct  2 14:39:03 localhost kernel: megasas: reset successful
Oct  2 14:39:33 localhost kernel: sd 0:2:1:0: megasas: RESET -135588 cmd=2a
Oct  2 14:39:33 localhost kernel: megasas: [ 0]waiting for 1 commands
to complete
Oct  2 14:39:34 localhost kernel: megasas: reset successful

  ... and so on.  They seemed harmless, but the thread at
http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0609.0/1387.html seemed
to indicate that this was a bug in the firmware with occasionally
serious effects.  Dell's site doesn't seem to provide the mentioned
upgrade to the firmware, though.  I worked around the problem for now
(by changing BLKDEV_MAX_RQ to 8 in include/linux/blkdev.h as
recommended in http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0607.1/1744.html
), which hasn't blown up on me yet, but I'm not entirely happy with
that as a permanent solution :-).
  Is there updated firmware available for this controller?  Can anyone
comment knowledgably about the source of this bug?  I saw someone
earlier on this list who said that it was a Linux driver bug.
  Thanks.