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SubjectRe: Samsung N130 ATA exception after 5min uptime -- Phoenix FailSafe issue?
On 11/28/2009 01:19 PM, Greg KH wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 26, 2009 at 05:42:12PM +0100, Johannes Stezenbach wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm refering to
>> http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14314
>> and I still have this issue on a N130 with latest BIOS (05CM),
>> running kernel 2.6.32-rc8 + wireless-testing.
>>
>> BIOS Information
>> Vendor: Phoenix Technologies Ltd.
>> Version: 05CM.M011.20091013.JIP
>> Release Date: 10/13/2009
>> Address: 0xE6300
>> Runtime Size: 105728 bytes
>> ROM Size: 2048 kB
>> Characteristics:
>> ISA is supported
>> PCI is supported
>> PNP is supported
>> BIOS is upgradeable
>> BIOS shadowing is allowed
>> ESCD support is available
>> ACPI is supported
>> USB legacy is supported
>> Smart battery is supported
>> BIOS boot specification is supported
>> Targeted content distribution is supported
>> BIOS Revision: 5.0
>>
>> Around 5min after boot or resume if generates the following error:
>>
>> [ 302.364174] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
>> [ 302.364201] ata1.00: failed command: WRITE DMA
>> [ 302.364234] ata1.00: cmd ca/00:08:f7:01:1a/00:00:00:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 4096 out
>> [ 302.364241] res 40/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
>> [ 302.364257] ata1.00: status: { DRDY }
>> [ 307.408107] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
>> [ 312.392109] ata1: device not ready (errno=-16), forcing hardreset
>> [ 312.392138] ata1: soft resetting link
>> [ 312.574482] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
>> [ 312.574506] ata1.00: device reported invalid CHS sector 0
>> [ 312.574542] ata1: EH complete
>
> This is because after 5 minutes, the BIOS implements C states in the
> processor, which causes a "hic-up" in userspace. Everything should be
> fine after this, and most importantly, the power usage drops by a few
> watts, which is most important.

Why does this "hiccup" seem to cause interrupts to get lost? This would
cause an up to 30-second stall in disk I/O.

>
>> This also happens when booting with rdinit=/bin/sh, i.e. only running busybox sh
>> inside initrd. The error then appears when accessing the disk after the 5min
>> period with dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/null count=10000.
>
> Yup, see above for why.
>
> Samsung does this to make booting their BIOS faster.

Ugh.. Seriously?

>
>> The link in comment #14 is dead but eventually I found
>> http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Moblin:/Base/openSUSE_11.1/src/kernel-source-2.6.31.6-37.1.src.rpm
>> which contains the attached patch with a samsung_laptop driver.
>>
>> I think it is weird that the Samsung BIOS has a special "SECLINUX" mode,
>> but anyway the samsung_laptop driver works (the backlight control via ACPI
>> also works with the 05CM BIOS, though).
>
> Yes, but Samsung does not support ACPI at this time, even though it is
> in their latest bios versions (experimental stuff, needed for Windows 7
> mode or something...)

ACPI support would seem much preferable to implementing power management
with such strange proprietary hacks..

>
> And yes, a "special" linux mode is weird, but at least they gave us
> something that works :)
>
>> However, it does not prevent the ATA exception.
>
> Yup, it's not an issue though.
>
>> (Side note about backlight level 0: I noticed that in Windows when you
>> set the backlight to the lowest level, after a minute of inactivity
>> the screen would dim one level more. Stupid -- why not allow the user
>> to choose that level manually?)
>
> Talk to samsung about this. There is one more lower level the BIOS can
> go to, which is what Windows does here. Samsung doesn't want Linux to
> use that mode at this time. It only saves a bit less than .1W, so it's
> not that big of a deal.
>
> Glad it's all working for you now.
>
> greg k-h



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