Quality of FreeBSD

[Joao Barros]

On 7/26/05, J. Porter Clark <jpc at suespammers.org> wrote:
> >On 7/25/05, J. Porter Clark <jpc at suespammers.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> The ATA (definitely not SATA) controller on my Dell Latitude
> >> C840 laptop has READ_DMA, WRITE_DMA problems, maybe 2-3 times
> >> a day unless I turn off DMA.  It hangs for 3-4 seconds, logs
> >> errors, then proceeds.  It isn't heavily loaded.  I tried using
> >> Soren's ATA mkIII patches, and now it likes to panic about that
> >> same frequency instead of hanging, so I'm going back to the
> >> stock RELENG_5 config next chance I get.
> >>
> >> It's one of these:
> >>
> >>   atapci0: <Intel ICH3 UDMA100 controller> port 0xbfa0-0xbfaf,0x376,0x170-0x177,0x 3f6,0x1f0-0x1f7 at device 31.1 on pci0
> 
> >Your going back to stock RELENG_5 from what?
> 
> RELENG_5 with Soren's patches.
> 
> >I have that very same laptop running FreeBSD from 5.0 up to 5.4 with
> >absolutely no DMA problems using it.
> >Note: I did exchange the HDD from 20 to 60GB, different brands.
> 
> Might be a clue.  My laptop has this:
> 
>   ad0: 19077MB <IC25N020ATCS04 0 CA2OA72A> at ata0-master UDMA100
> 

Mine is:
ad0: 57231MB <FUJITSU MHS2060AT/8004> [116280/16/63] at ata0-master UDMA100

> Typical errors:
>   Jul 23 15:00:33 auricle kernel: ad0: TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA retrying (2 retries left) LBA=20586350
>   Jul 25 09:01:52 auricle kernel: ad0: TIMEOUT - READ_MUL retrying (2 retries left) LBA=1731115
> 
> I had been running 4.X on this box with no DMA problems until I
> put 5.3 on it many months ago.  It also boots Windows XP, and I
> don't have any obvious disk problems with that.
>

I dual boot between XP and FreeBSD and even use VMWare to boot FreeBSD
with the real partition. Nice having FreeBSD compiling something in
the background while using XP :)
 
> Do you have trouble with the touchpad occasionally going nuts?
> I had mine replaced, and it still does it.  With any OS I care
> to boot.

That is a keyboard problem (the pointer device in the keyboard) I had
one exchanged on this C840 and 2 others on a C610.

> 
> I have some Firewire-related problems, too, but I won't go into
> them right now.

I *think* I tested networking and attached storage with firewire.
If you care to email me with your problems I can try see if it happens
to me too.

--
Joao Barros