[Nottingham] Computer woes

[Duncan John Fyfe]

On Thu, 5 Jun 2003, Alex Walker wrote:

> On Thursday 05 June 2003 09:55, Duncan John Fyfe wrote:


> > From what little I understand this problem can come about for a few of
> > reasons: Either the disk is dying - but you may be able to salvage some of
> > your data before t dies. or the DMA controller is having trouble.
>

The DMA controller 'having trouble' can be because of the drive (timings slightly wrong).

> The DMA controller on the motherboard is fine I think, since the other 2 hard
> disks in this machine work perfectly... indeed I am booted to Linux on one of
> them right now.
>
> > Things to try ...
> > 1. Either remove all references to hdd partitions from fstab etc or boot
> > from a rescue floppy/cd.  You want disk access under manual control.
>
> Booting from CD has the same result - it dies in the initial boot-up phase
> before you can get to any command prompt or anything vaguely useful.  The
> errors come pretty soon after it detects the hard disks...  Unfortunately
> this means I can't try most of the other things you suggest, cos they require
> the system to be bootable!
>

Some kernel boot parameters to try:
1.	'hdd=slow'     = slow things down a bit.
2.	'hdd=noprobe'  = drive is present but don't autoprobe it.
3.	'ide1=nodma'   = don't automatically use dma on this interface (I think that is right)

>
> Not a bad idea... will have to find one first.

Where in/around Nottingham are you ?
A friendly list member may be able to help.


Have fun,
Duncan

-- 
Duncan John Fyfe          X-ray Astronomy Group,
                          Dept. of Physics & Astronomy,
Phone +44 116 252 3635    University of Leicester,
E-mail djf@star.le.ac.uk  University Road,
                          Leicester, LE1 7RH, U.K.