indefinite wait buffer: Does this indicate hardware issue?

[Xin LI]

Hi, Peter,

On 12/17/05, Peter Jeremy <PeterJeremy at optushome.com.au> wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-Dec-17 04:06:36 +0800, Xin LI wrote:
> >No, it's sometimes other, and is quite infrequent.  On the other hand,
> >neither SMART nor error has reported some incident, so I was stuck
> >when looking on hardware issues, as the message does not indicate
> >which disk(s) may have problem...
>
> A hardware error should have been reported as such.  But if you
> suspect a disk problem, try dd'ing the swap partition (or the whole
> disk) to /dev/null.  If you can read the whole partition, you can
> probably write to it.  (Or you could dd /dev/zero to the partitions
> whilst swap is not attached - eg in single user after boot).  If you
> suspect retries are a problem, monitor the I/O rate with iostat or
> systat and see if it suddenly drops.

Actually I already tried to dd with no luck...  I suspect that the
cable may have some problems, though, as a hard disk is working at
half speed of the other one (say, it's not a sudden drop)...  But will
this cause the warning?

Cheers,
--
Xin LI <delphij at delphij.net> http://www.delphij.net