Kernel panic on PC with broken hard drive, after DMA errors

Kernel panic on PC with broken hard drive, after DMA errors

[Martin Michlmayr]

My laptop hard drive recently died (or is in the process of dying).
HP wanted me to do some more tests before sending me a replacement, so
I tried booting Linux again today.  I got lots of DMA errors, which
was really to be expected, but then I got a kernel panic.  While I'd
not blame the kernel when a panic occurs with broken RAM or CPU, I'm
sure sure the kernel should panic just because of a broken IDE drive.

I posted a picture of the panic at http://cyrius.com/tmp/ide_panic.jpg
Is this something that can be fixed or is my hardware really so broken
that the kernel cannot deal with it?
-- 
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/

Re: Kernel panic on PC with broken hard drive, after DMA errors

[Martin Michlmayr]

* Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> [2006-03-09 16:45]:
> > The dying hard drive is quite arbitrary when it comes to showing
> > errors or working fine...
> 
> Ancient known problem. I'd be interested if you can however break
> libata and the PATA IDE patches the same way.

Sorry, but I'm not able to give you more information.  I tried again
several times with PATA and never saw the oops again, so I don't think
trying libata would help since not seeing an oops wouldn't mean
anything at all.  Unless there is a _specific_ way to trigger this bug
("cause much disk IO" isn't enough because it only led to an oops once
out of maybe something like 30-40 tries) I cannot do anything.
-- 
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/

Re: Kernel panic on PC with broken hard drive, after DMA errors

[Alan Cox]

On Iau, 2006-03-09 at 16:53 +0000, Martin Michlmayr wrote:
> * Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> [2006-03-09 16:45]:
> > Ancient known problem. I'd be interested if you can however break
> > libata and the PATA IDE patches the same way.
> 
> I can try, but like I said, the hard drive acts pretty arbitrarily and
> won't always fail when I want it to.  Do you know if there's a way to
> trigger the problem?  Otherwise I'll just try a couple of times,
> but without a good way to trigger the problem I cannot really say if
> it's gone with libata.

You could try heavy I/O (find / -print type stuff), or if its specific
problem blocks then cp /dev/hda (/dev/sda for libata) /dev/null.

Libata should either error correctly or recover cleanly from the
problems.

Re: Kernel panic on PC with broken hard drive, after DMA errors

[Martin Michlmayr]

* Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> [2006-03-09 16:45]:
> Ancient known problem. I'd be interested if you can however break
> libata and the PATA IDE patches the same way.

I can try, but like I said, the hard drive acts pretty arbitrarily and
won't always fail when I want it to.  Do you know if there's a way to
trigger the problem?  Otherwise I'll just try a couple of times,
but without a good way to trigger the problem I cannot really say if
it's gone with libata.
-- 
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/

Re: Kernel panic on PC with broken hard drive, after DMA errors

[Alan Cox]

On Iau, 2006-03-09 at 15:14 +0000, Martin Michlmayr wrote:
> on or do you need more information?  I can hook up a serial console
> and try to capture the full log, but I'm not sure I can reproduce this
> kernel panic.  The dying hard drive is quite arbitrary when it comes
> to showing errors or working fine...

Ancient known problem. I'd be interested if you can however break libata
and the PATA IDE patches the same way. 

Re: Kernel panic on PC with broken hard drive, after DMA errors

[Martin Michlmayr]

* Robert Hancock <hancockr@shaw.ca> [2006-03-08 22:03]:
> Probably is a genuine bug. These kinds of reports have come up a few
> times recently as I recall - it seems some of the error handling in
> the drivers/ide code isn't quite so robust..

Was the traceback I posted enough so someone can find out what's going
on or do you need more information?  I can hook up a serial console
and try to capture the full log, but I'm not sure I can reproduce this
kernel panic.  The dying hard drive is quite arbitrary when it comes
to showing errors or working fine...
-- 
Martin Michlmayr
http://www.cyrius.com/

Re: Kernel panic on PC with broken hard drive, after DMA errors

[Robert Hancock]

Martin Michlmayr wrote:
> My laptop hard drive recently died (or is in the process of dying).
> HP wanted me to do some more tests before sending me a replacement, so
> I tried booting Linux again today.  I got lots of DMA errors, which
> was really to be expected, but then I got a kernel panic.  While I'd
> not blame the kernel when a panic occurs with broken RAM or CPU, I'm
> sure sure the kernel should panic just because of a broken IDE drive.
> 
> I posted a picture of the panic at http://cyrius.com/tmp/ide_panic.jpg
> Is this something that can be fixed or is my hardware really so broken
> that the kernel cannot deal with it?

Probably is a genuine bug. These kinds of reports have come up a few 
times recently as I recall - it seems some of the error handling in the 
drivers/ide code isn't quite so robust..

-- 
Robert Hancock      Saskatoon, SK, Canada
To email, remove "nospam" from hancockr@nospamshaw.ca
Home Page: http://www.roberthancock.com/