Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Thu, 19 Sep 1996 22:22:12 +0100 | From | Tony Robinson <> | Subject | V 2.0.6 and IDE errors |
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I count 8 linux-kernel messages in my News spool (14 days) that refer to IDE disk problem (obtained by: egrep -l read_intr /usr/spool/news/linux/dev/kernel/* | wc).
Now call me Dr Paranoid but I just tried installing Debian GNU/Linux 1.1 on a couple of partitions of a Compaq LTE 5100 machine that has a 1.2 Gbyte Toshiba drive. The machine had worked fine (old Slackware 3.0, only X had expired) until the upgrade, then very soon after (before I had really finished the installation) I get a lot of the IDE Unrecoverable errors. I have four partitions on the drive (DOS, /, swap and /home on hd[a-d] respectively), and thinking it was a dud partition I wiped /home with another attempt at installation. As soon as I tried reasonable disk activity (i.e. an emacs while the standard FTP access was installing) I get IDE disk errors and file system corruption.
Now I can think of four things:
1) the disk was shot and it was purely coincidence that it happened at upgrade time (twice...). 2) the 2.0.6 (I think) standard (stable) debian kernel has a problem - perhaps because it doesn't enable some bug fixes or whatever. 3) there is a real problem here as Linux can make use of an IDE controller more efficiently than DOS so exercise more bugs. 4) none of the above.
Yes, I saw this problem first time with "/" but I wanted some debugging info and so sacrificed my /home partition. Now DOS format can't cope with "/" (it just gives up) so I guess I need a new drive (it is only 10 months old). DOS format only found one bad block with the old "/home", but this is what I saw last time and ignoring it for a day or so resulted in an unformatable partition (I guess on the second attempt I caught it in time - I stopped on the first IDE error). I now seem to have lost most of my disk, and don't have a portable to take with me anymore.
Sorry I can't provide more information - the machine is no longer on the net...
Tony Robinson
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