Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sun, 20 Apr 2008 11:33:09 +0200 | From | Rumi Szabolcs <> | Subject | dying hdd causing MCE and panic (libata) |
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Hello all!
A SATA drive in one of my servers has made some final steps towards the grave and it has put out some obvious signs of this onto the console (ATA transactions failing) but then it has also thrown an MCE (CPU context corrupt) and then the kernel has panicked. This server is rock stable otherwise and used to make uptimes measured in months between planned restarts.
The machine has been removed from power completely and restarted multiple times but during the boot process it always crashed with an MCE or a panic or both.
Sorry but I cannot provide exact debug information right now because I wasn't physically there at the time and I'm still 250kms away from that server. In fact I've remotely guided two people without a clue through the phone and they have read things from the console for me, restarted the machine, etc.
So in the end I told them to open up the server and pull the SATA cable from that particular drive. Suddenly all the MCEs and panics had gone away and the machine is running fine since then.
Hardware:
- Nforce4 based motherboard (chipset integrated SATA ports) - Athlon64 single core CPU - Diamondmax 9 SATA hard drive
Kernel:
2.6.23-gentoo-r3 (no preempt, no smp)
My questions:
- Is it normal that a simple hard disk failure (that is not even the system disk) causes MCEs and kernel panics?
- Is this a problem that is induced completely on the hardware level (eg. the southbridge going crazy and making the whole hardware platform unstable) or a problem that could be fixed or handled properly on the software (kernel) level?
Thanks!
Best regards, Sab
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