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Date:      Fri, 03 Jun 2011 15:09:55 +0300
From:      Kaya Saman <kayasaman@gmail.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Strange system lockups - kernel saying disk error
Message-ID:  <4DE8CF13.1040304@gmail.com>

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Hi,

I have an ancient pre-HT PIV machine with <500MB RAM.

The system has an extra PCI->SATA card installed so I can  make use of 
modern high capacity drives.

Everything was running fine until round about 2 days ago when the system 
started locking up on me?


Current drive configuration for the system is:

40GB IDE drive as root (ad2) - UFS2
500GB IDE drive for storage (ad3) - EXT3
1TB SATA drive for storage (ad4) - UFS2
750GB SATA drive for storage (ad8) - EXT3

I had an issue with the 750GB drive which the file system seemed to have 
got corrupted so I powered down and backed the information up to a 2TB 
SATA drive using ddrescue and the Gentoo Linux based System Rescue CD. I 
put the 2TB drive in place of the 1TB ad4 drive physically.

Once backed up I powered down again and re-installed the 1TB SATA drive 
into ad4 position on system and completely removed the 2TB backup.

When booted back into FreeBSD upon boot I received this error:


  WARNING:  Kernel Errors Present
     ad4: FAILURE - WRITE_DMA48 status=51<READY,DSC,ERROR>  error=4<ABORTED>  LBA=1 ...:  1 Time(s)
     g_vfs_done():ad4e[WRITE(offset=974444691456, length=16384)]error = 5 ...:  1 Time(s)


The current status of the disks seemed to be ok though:

  1 Time(s): ad2: 38166MB<Seagate ST340014A 3.06>  at ata1-master UDMA33
  1 Time(s): ad2: DMA limited to UDMA33, controller found non-ATA66 cable
  1 Time(s): ad3: 476940MB<Seagate ST3500630A 3.AAF>  at ata1-slave UDMA33
  1 Time(s): ad3: DMA limited to UDMA33, controller found non-ATA66 cable
  1 Time(s): ad4: 953869MB<SAMSUNG HD103SJ 1AJ10001>  at ata2-master SATA150
  1 Time(s): ad8: 715404MB<Seagate ST3750640AS 3.AAE>  at ata4-master SATA150
  1 Time(s): agp0:<SiS 651 host to AGP bridge>  on hostb0
  1 Time(s): ata0:<ATA channel 0>  on atapci0
  1 Time(s): ata0: [ITHREAD]
  1 Time(s): ata1:<ATA channel 1>  on atapci0
  1 Time(s): ata1: [ITHREAD]
  1 Time(s): ata2:<ATA channel 0>  on atapci1
  1 Time(s): ata2: [ITHREAD]
  1 Time(s): ata3:<ATA channel 1>  on atapci1
  1 Time(s): ata3: [ITHREAD]
  1 Time(s): ata4:<ATA channel 2>  on atapci1
  1 Time(s): ata4: [ITHREAD]
  1 Time(s): ata5:<ATA channel 3>  on atapci1


In order to test if the error was due to disk failure I powered down and 
disconnected the ad4 and ad3 disks and powered back up.


The system still seems to be locking on me and I can't understand why?


Through Google'ing a discovered a post by Jeremy Chadwick about these 
kinds of errors:

http://wiki.freebsd.org/JeremyChadwick/ATA_issues_and_troubleshooting

however since the system board is pre-SATA is doesn't even have 
S.M.A.R.T. so I'm totally lost on how to fix this. I mean the best 
remedy would be to get a new computer and migrate the stored information 
(something like this is on the way) but currently I don't have access to 
any of the disks at all and to make matters worse no NTP or DNS server 
as I was running these services on the same machine or TFTP boot server 
for my IP phones. - I do run multiboot UNIX on my notebook so Bind9 is 
naturally installed hence me writing this but I only activate in 
emergencies.

I mean one way I thought of for fixing this would be to grab a USB -> 
ATA/SATA adapter:

http://www.startech.com/product/USB2SATAIDE-USB-20-to-IDE-or-SATA-Adapter-Cable

and hook the drives up to both Linux and FreeBSD in my notebook and copy 
the information across to the new system when it arrives in a few months.


Aside from that is there anyway to fix the kernel error quickly?


Thanks,


Kaya




  1 Time(s): ata5: [ITHREAD]





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