Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 2 Sep 2009 08:07:43 +0200 | From | Raphael Manfredi <> | Subject | Re: [2.6.30.5] Diagnosing an IDE lockup with SMART long tests |
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Quoting Robert Hancock: > It's most likely a bug in the IDE code somewhere, but realistically the > most effective course of action would likely be to switch from the old IDE > drivers and use libata instead. The IDE code doesn't receive that much > testing these days, and it's really hard to debug (as you've seen, the > debugging output is rather atrocious).
Sure, but we're talking a production machine here. Moving to libata to handle the IDE drives would involve many changes everywhere in the system and cause instability. For instance, /etc/fstab would need to refer to /dev/sd*, /etc/mdadm.conf needs rewriting as well... This is a complex move, and there's no assurance that libata won't have bugs in its PATA handling.
Since the machine is otherwise stable, I'm rather aiming at a workaround. Today, the workaround I have is to not run SMART long tests but it proved dangerous. Therefore, I'm looking for a kernel workaround to avoid the lockups.
Why would the reading of the status register of the IDE interface cause a lockup? If I can prevent the lockup and resume work, I would not mind having a few lost interrupts events now and then.
Raphael
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