From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jul 21 10:24:45 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6208D16A41F for ; Thu, 21 Jul 2005 10:24:45 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from cyrus.watson.org (cyrus.watson.org [204.156.12.53]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5300543D86 for ; Thu, 21 Jul 2005 10:24:39 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [204.156.12.50]) by cyrus.watson.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EA82646B8F; Thu, 21 Jul 2005 06:24:38 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 11:25:05 +0100 (BST) From: Robert Watson X-X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: Steve In-Reply-To: <42DF2A8F.30202@powersystemsdirect.com> Message-ID: <20050721112230.A97888@fledge.watson.org> References: <42DF2A8F.30202@powersystemsdirect.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: READ_DMA, WRITE_DMA errors X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 10:24:45 -0000 On Wed, 20 Jul 2005, Steve wrote: > I've found tons of emails, news messages, listserv messages, and even > some bug reports of this seemingly common error. > > So, I had been running 5.2 on a server, and, updated to 5.3. Got the > READ_DMA and WRITE_DMA error and retries. So, figuring it might be a bad > update, took a new drive. put it in, loaded 5.4 for grins, and, same > issue, lots of these errors, eventually destroying the FS. Played around > with various settings, no avail. So, took it back, got different box, > everything new. Same problem, new install of 5.4 6.0 contains a significant re-write and update of the ATA driver, and corrects a number of known problems with timeouts and reliability. This rewrite is available as patches against 5.x, but has not been committed because ATA is a very sensitive thing (lots of very diverse and very broken hardware), and has had insufficient testing. If you have test hardware available that's not in production, it would be quite helpful if you could install 6.0-BETA2, once that comes out in the next week or so, and see if the specific ATA problems you're experiencing occur there. It's not impossible that the new ATA code will be merged to 5.x, but I think we cannot do that until it has seen a lot more exposure. If you search back through the mailing archives, you should be able to find posts from Soren regarding the new ATA patches, if you want to give them a try on 5.x. Robert N M Watson