WRITE_DMA timeouts

[Forrest Aldrich]

Sorry, I should have specified the system.  This is an older Compaq 
AP200.  I've not idea what controller it's using on the motherboard, but 
can try Googling to find out.   The processor is 500mhz, and has a 
reasonable amount of RAM.

Again, this problem I'm seeing on /dev/console is intermittent.   But 
the system otherwise appears to be peforming fine.

It has 2 10krpm 10gb drives (IDE).

Anyone else seeing this problem?

The last build of this system was Oct 24th, I can CVSup and rebuild if 
there have been some corrections.... ?



Forrest



On 11/05/04 01:22 PM, Forrest Aldrich sat at the `puter and typed:
> I have a test machine with FreeBSD-5.3 RC2.  It only has 2 drives (ATA). 
>   I am seeing this error (intermittently):
> 
> ad0: TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA retrying (2 retries left) LBA=3239915
> ad0: FAILURE - WRITE_DMA timed out
> 
> Though the system seems to otherwise be working just fine.
> 
> This used to be a Windows/XP system for a long time, and I never had any 
> trouble.  So I wonder what the above can be indicative of (ie: bad 
> cabling, or?).

&!#@.  I was hoping this was a thing of the past.

I've seen this a lot with 5.2.1, but I usually ended up with a siezed
system.  I don't see how the fact that you had XP on the system could
affect FreeBSD.

Exactly what ATA controller do you have?  I've run into trouble with the
Intel ICH5 SATA controller in a new Dell Dimension 8300.  I received
*lots* of suggestions that the drive was bad (as per the little sniglet
at the bottom), but that isn't the problem - it passed every utility I
was able to put it through.

BTW, my drive is a brand new WD 160 Gig.

After days of googling, I found only a few suggestions that the problem
was the scheduler and/or the HT processor.  I turned HT off in the bios,
and it still locks up - especially when shutting down.  I've put the
hardware through dozens of checks and tests, and there are absolutely no
problems except when running FreeBSD with the disk under load.  Even XP
didn't lock up like this.

I've been holding this new Dell in limbo for nearly 4 months waiting for
this exact problem to get fixed.  I *really* hate to do it, but I'm
going to have to consider Linux if this doesn't get resolved in 5.3.
And it looks like it isn't.  I know I could get the code and work on it
myself, but I'm not a driver engineer, and as much as I'd like to, I
don't have the time to learn it right now.

Good luck.
Lou
-- 
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Fully Funded Hobbyist, KeySlapper Extrordinaire :)
http://www.keyslapper.org                     Ô¿Ô¬

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