FBSD 2.5.1-p11 | Promise SATA150 TX2plus | Seagate B 200GB - BAD SUPERBLK / Machine freezes up etc

[Louis LeBlanc]

On 11/08/04 06:57 PM, Sebastian Holmqvist sat at the `puter and typed:
> Hi, I'm running a FBSD 5.2.1-p11 server on a 350 PII.
> 1 IDE is plugged in on the motherboard. The other two Seagate
> Barracuda 200 GB SATA discs are plugged in on the controllercard.
> 
> I get bad geometry in sysinstall (which is apparently a bug as far as
> I know from searching old mail-lists).  Fdisk states that 387621/16/63
> is wrong. Inside is changes to 24321/255/63.
> ST3200822AS is the product name for the hard-drive.
> http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/personal/family/0,1085,599,00.html
> is the datasheet.
> 
> My problem is when I transfer large amounts of data to any of the discs.
> WIthout warning, the whole system absolutely freeze up and I have to
> manually reboot.
> When I then run fsck it reports on several problems, among them a
> SUPERBLK ERROR. I take it that's not good :p
> The disc has to be formatted and we go again.
> 
> The first time it happened, I acquired a fan since they seemed a tad
> hot.. They were pushing 60°C. They are now around 35°C idle. High load
> is probably putting them around 45°C I believe.
> 
> 
> These are the theories I've come up with:
> 1) Both my discs are bad (brand new when I bought them)
> 2) The setup with the controller card and the motherboard doesn't work
> 3) FBSD can't handle the data-transfer very well after a while. Could
> it be that the data goes to the IDE and then to the SATA-discs?
> 
> Thanks in advance, I really don't know how to handle this. Or, well
> I'm gonna try updating to 5.3 in a couple of days, since they have
> better SATA-handling I've been told.

I've had problems with an Intel ICH5 SATA controller, and serious system
lockups much like what you're describing.

I've run my drive through every utility I could find and I'm convinced
there's nothing wrong with it.

I've been getting WRITE_DMA timeouts in /var/log/messages though,
typically 1 to 3 of them before the lockup.  Have you noticed any of
these?

I hadn't thought about the fdisk issue, but yesterday I did a new 5.3
install and got a similar message to yours.

Based on the fdisk message, I'm going to keep an eye out for anything
strange.  I haven't had this problem in 5.3 yet, but if I do, I'll be
sure to look up the drives data sheet (WD 160G) and see how they match.
In the past, I've always let fdisk do what it wanted, but maybe I should
have forced it to the mfg spec.  Perhaps I'll retry the install using
that method.  If it changes anything, I'll post it here.

Not sure this helps, but maybe it'll put a couple pieces of the puzzle
together somewhere.

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

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.
    -- Sagan