Anthony's drive issues.Re: ssh password delay

[Bart Silverstrim]

On Mar 22, 2005, at 11:50 AM, Anthony Atkielski wrote:

> Bart Silverstrim writes:
>
>> Obvious concern is that it is a warning that something's wrong (or not
>> set up correctly) and it may fail or cause problems down the road.
>
> Who can tell me _exactly_ what it means?

I don't know...I'm not on the devel team!  I'm sorry!  Well, that's 
kind of a lie, but I really don't know who in particular to contact.  I 
never came to the list demanding an old driver be run through the debug 
wringer.

>> Well, is there a way to dump the code from that controller and compare
>> it to another one that is known not to be tampered with by the OEM?
>
> I don't know.

Well, maybe someone else on the list knows! :-)

>> No, but you eliminate the obvious and the easiest-to-fix parts first.
>
> The hardware is neither obvious nor easy to fix.

Really?  We had a system just a couple days ago that was rebooting at 
random.  Removed one of the memory sticks, haven't had a trouble report 
since.  Seems pretty darn easy to me...

>> Digging through source code and going through debug cycles for legacy
>> hardware isn't exactly time well spent by most sane opinions, when the
>> fix could be a ten minute swap of a drive or something like that.
>
> If I knew the source code, resolving the problem would probably take
> about ten minutes.

And you'd most likely be a full-time developer on the team.  But even 
then I don't know too many bugs that take "just" ten minutes to fix.

>> Actually, I think most troubleshooters would get another processor
>> first (or check that cooling was adequate to the CPU and memory) if
>> that was what fixed it last time.  Next would be memory.  So right off
>> the bat you have fans to check, processor, and memory.  None of which
>> are the fault of the OS, all very likely culprits.
>
> I replaced the entire machine, except for a few components: the floppy
> disk drive, the CD drives, and the original disk (which, oddly enough,
> is _not_ the one generating the SATA errors).

I just named the fix we go through when presented with the errors you 
gave me.  Anyone else on the list think I'm that far off base with my 
solution to segement error crashes that previously were fixed after 
replacing the CPU?  In my experience, it's bad processor or memory, or 
a cooling issue.  After that, we look at the PCI bus...video, sound, 
etc....we normally don't reinstall the OS if it was working and 
suddenly gave errors like that.

>> That's an interesting philosophy.  I already posted about Linux
>> messaging that the controller was in need of constant resets.  The
>> drive was *FAILING*.  NT didn't say anything.  If you like sticking
>> your head in a hole then go ahead and comment out the code that give
>> the error and all will be well.  Most UNIX people like having
>> diagnostic errors in the logs to troubleshoot things.
>
> If you have backups, you'll survive.  It's nice to have warnings, but
> not a hundred times a day at 30 pages each.  Nor are warnings much good
> when they freeze or crash the system.

When it crashes or freezes, I don't think that's because of the 
warnings as much as it is due to what the warnings are warning 
about...but thats just my observation.

BTW-backups would be nice, but if the drive or controller (or memory) 
are going wonky but "keep working", you have no guarantee your backups 
are in a consistent state.

>> Can you contact whoever the developer is that's in charge of SCSI 
>> work?
>
> Isn't that what this list is for?

No...didn't think so.  This is a users question list.  I don't know how 
many of the developers monitor this list.

>> Haven't you ever used Knoppix?  It's liveboot.
>
> This machine won't boot from a CD.

um...

>> You're telling me you've never heard of it before?
>
> I've heard of it, but this machine won't boot from a CD.

I'm beginning to not blame FreeBSD for not supporting your hardware if 
it's this old...?

>> Did you even look at the link/google searches I sent previously for
>> people to ponder over with some critical thinking, the Shatter attack
>> and Why I Hate MS pages?
>
> These pages will not resolve my problem.

No, but they may augment your critical thinking skills.  Especially 
when you're pining about MS's responsiveness to issues.  Shatter, 
according to the author, CANNOT be fixed, and MS has ignored it.  Thus 
it counters your claims.  The Why I Hate MS page is an excellent and 
well written document on several points of what's perceived as "wrong" 
with MS.

Won't resolve your problems but it may keep you from spouting off on 
the wonders of a company that isn't all that flowery great and not 
always customer driven.