Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2004 22:33:10 -0500 From: Nikolas Britton <freebsd@nbritton.org> To: jfm@blueyonder.co.uk Cc: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Subject: Re: New day, new drive (Was 'going small') Message-ID: <4089DFF6.1020504@nbritton.org> In-Reply-To: <523j80dedv1lqpnmpphkfv80vguaqh2hp4@4ax.com>
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John Murphy wrote: >I said "It's pointless to have such a nice new thing spoilt by >a clunky old 1.3GByte disk drive which is so fat I can't get >the lid on" > >She said "Well what about that one you said you could use?" > >"It's broken" I exclaimed. > >"You are supposed to be able to fix things" She continued... > >Anyway, the 40G Fujitsu arrived double bubble wrapped today so >I went ahead and attempted to re-install 5.2.1 and got very >similar errors to the ones I saw on the "broken" drive. > >The messages were the same but the locations were slightly >different. I remembered something about creating a small >FAT16 slice helping in such situations so I verified all the >partitions/slices with Ranish Partition Manager[1] and then >deleted all the partition records and created a 64K or so >partition. No improvement. > >I'm doing this on my main (only) desktop therefore no resources >available for consultation without using hers. No means of >copying error messages[2] but it was something like: > >ad0:WARNING - write UDMA ICRC error >ad0:FAILURE - write dma status=51<READY,DSC,ERROR> error 84 >ad0:FAILURE - write dma status=51<IRC,ABORTED>LBA=65 (to) >ad0:FAILURE - write dma status=51<IRC,ABORTED>LBA=78 >and so on; each time four blocks possibly located at slice >boundaries. > >My first thought was to write to questions@freebsd.org and CC >hackers@ and a few others, but thought I'd better consult the >documentation first ;) In Section 3 Open issues at: >http://www.uk.freebsd.org/releases/5.2.1R/errata.html >It says: (9 Jan 2004, updated 28 Feb 2004) >In some cases, ATA devices may behave erratically, particularly >SATA devices. Reported symptoms include command timeouts or >missing interrupts. These problems appear to be timing-dependent, >making them rather difficult to isolate. Workarounds include: > >* Turn off ATA DMA using the ``safe mode'' option of the > bootloader or the hw.ata.ata_dma sysctl variable. >* Use the host's BIOS setup options to put the ATA controller in > its ``legacy mode'', if available. >* Disable ACPI, for example using the ``safe mode'' option of the > bootloader or using the hint.acpi.0.disabled kernel environment > variable. > >So I tried the middle way first as the BIOS had certainly got the >drive geometry wrong anyway - so I set it to the C/H/S fbsd fdisk & >ranish had calculated. No change. > >The 5.2.1 boot process draws an ASCII beastie and gives several boot >options triggerable by a number key press, so I pressed 3 for safe >mode. Entered ufs:ad0s1a at the next prompt and installed without >error. Getting somewhere at last, or so I thought, the first attempt >to boot the installation was riddled with UDMA IRC errors. > >I let the errors run and eventually they stopped at a login prompt. >So I logged in as rad0:WARNING - write UDMA ICRC erroroad0:FAILURE >- write dma status=51<READY,DSC,ERROR> error 84oad0:FAILURE - write >dma status=51<IRC,ABORTED>LBA=65t > >Managed to re-boot or re-set, can't remember which, and tried booting >in safe mode but the file system was truly trashed. > >Re-installed (in safe (no dma) mode) and booted the installed OS in >safe mode - whoopee, five vr0 watchdog timeouts after starting sshd >but stability at last. > >So where's the sysctl to turn off dma setable from? /etc/sysctl.conf? >Nope. It's not writeable from there. Added 'hw.ata.ata_dma="0"' to >/boot/loader.conf and the rest was easy. > >It's just sitting on the LAN, it's as quiet as a Lamb. >Should I enable dma?[3] NO DON'T! I hear you say. > >[1] Ranish Partition Manager http://www.ranish.com/part/ is just so > handy sometimes. Boots swiftly from a floppy and even recognises > freebsd partitions. > Ranish failed to verify partitions on the "broken" drive. > >[2] There's probably a way to write all error messages to a file on a > floppy or to some other safe media. I bet developers do it all > the time. > >[3] Yeah I know - I shouldn't ask technical questions on newbies@. :) > > > Donno.....Download/Install m0n0wall (5MB) (Uses FreeBSD 4.9, and fully supports the net48xx boards) or FreeBSD 4.9 (don't get 4.10-RC) (Mini ISO, 200MB) to diagnoise weather its a software or a hardware issue, it's probable that its a freebsd 5 issue. Basic steps for m0n0wall test: 1. download the m0n0wall build for the net48xx board: http://www.m0n0.ch/wall/download.php?file=net48xx-1.0.img 2. pop the notebook drive in a normal pc (*nix or windows). 3. follow this short guide and image the notebook drive with the file you downloaded: http://www.m0n0.ch/wall/installation_embedded.php 4. pop the drive back into the net4801 and boot it. 5. scroll lock and check the freebsd bootup msgs.help
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