[Gllug] ATA errors

[Alain Williams]

On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 08:49:29PM +0000, Tethys wrote:
> 
> My backup failed last night, because the device was read only:
> 
> > building file list ... done
> > rsync: delete_file: unlink "/backup/local/shared/camera/2009-08-24--foq/img_0507.jpg" failed: Read-only file system (30)
> > rsync: delete_file: unlink "/backup/local/shared/camera/2009-08-24--foq/.xvpics/img_0507.jpg" failed: Read-only file system (30)
> 
> That's never a good sign. Looking through the logs, I see a number of
> ATA errors, starting with a timeout, a device error, and a bunch of
> HSM violations. A few examples:
> 
> > Mar 22 07:56:03 riva kernel: ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
> > Mar 22 07:56:03 riva kernel: ata2.00: cmd 25/00:00:87:d1:86/00:02:03:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 262144 in
> > Mar 22 07:56:03 riva kernel:          res 40/00:00:00:00:00/ff:ff:ff:ff:ff/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
> > Mar 22 07:56:03 riva kernel: ata2.00: status: { DRDY }
> > Mar 22 07:56:03 riva kernel: ata2: hard resetting link
> > Mar 22 07:56:03 riva kernel: ata2: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
> > Mar 22 07:56:03 riva kernel: ata2.00: configured for UDMA/33
> > Mar 22 07:56:03 riva kernel: ata2: EH complete
> > Mar 22 07:56:03 riva kernel: SCSI device sdb: 1465149168 512-byte hdwr sectors (750156 MB)
> > Mar 22 07:56:03 riva kernel: sdb: Write Protect is off
> > Mar 22 07:56:03 riva kernel: SCSI device sdb: drive cache: write back

I had a lot of problems about a year ago with a client machine, some of it discussed
on this list. Long story short: the end result was that the hardware at each end of the SATA
link was negotiating too high a speed, this resulted in occasional errors, most of which
recovered (after longish delays) and then a device would go off line.

It was fixed by the h/ware people inserting a tiny jumper on the disks to cap the
data rate ... the disks have been well behaved since.

I don't know if this is what is happening here.

-- 
Alain Williams
Linux/GNU Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT Lecturer.
+44 (0) 787 668 0256  http://www.phcomp.co.uk/
Parliament Hill Computers Ltd. Registration Information: http://www.phcomp.co.uk/contact.php
Past chairman of UKUUG: http://www.ukuug.org/
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