From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Jun 15 11:50:51 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from eyry.econ.iastate.edu (eyry.econ.iastate.edu [129.186.32.221]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6646F14CF3 for ; Tue, 15 Jun 1999 11:50:47 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from hawk@eyry.econ.iastate.edu) Received: from eyry.econ.iastate.edu (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by eyry.econ.iastate.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA83705; Tue, 15 Jun 1999 13:50:58 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from hawk@eyry.econ.iastate.edu) Message-Id: <199906151850.NAA83705@eyry.econ.iastate.edu> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 2/24/98 To: Doug White Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: help, it won't let go of my floppy In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 15 Jun 1999 11:13:14 PDT." Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Tue, 15 Jun 1999 13:50:58 -0500 From: "Richard E. Hawkins" Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG doug replied, > On Fri, 11 Jun 1999, Richard E. Hawkins wrote: > > There seems to be something wrong with my floppy drive, or the diskette > > in it. > > I tried to umount it, and it's seeking endlessly. It's been at it > > about 20 minutes so far. Last time that this happened, it resulted in > > not properly dismounting the other file systems on the next boot. > > My hard disk now seems to be abnormally busy, as well. > > How do I get control of the system back? > Interrupt problems? I have no idea, but I doubt it. This box had run debian for about a year and a half, save for ill-fated bouts of less than a week each with FreeBSD 3.0 1nd 3.1 (mutual hostility between the file systems with 3.0, and 3.1 panicced on boot about 20% of the time due to the extended partition). WHatever the interrupt settings are, they came there from the factory, and worked for a long timel Debian had come to dislike the floppy, too, but simply had errors. There's part of the diskette that it just doesn't seem to want to access, and it starts grinding. IT can read well enough to boot either the freebsd install disks or debian, but only about 50-50 for tom's unix, and it can't write well enough for any of the three. BUt under linux, it grinds & fails, while FreeBSD continues to try forever. After about 20 minutes of grinding, I pulled the power from it. A couple of hours later, i reconnected, and it was still grinding. Not to long after that, pieces of the system started dying off--parts but not all of window selection in fvwm, etc. I tried to reboot, but it was too late. It would reply to pings from outside, but was dead on every port I could think of. Somehow it seems related to the floppy driver never giving up and returning an error, even after physical removal of the diskette, and even after the hardware ceased talking. Once I get a new floppy, i'd be happy to mail this eveil kernel-killer off to a developer who can make use of it. But I have no spares, so it's goign to be a few weeks. rick -- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message