[mythtv-users] OT: SATA errors

[Brian Wood]

On Thursday 09 July 2009 21:14:33 Harry Devine wrote:
> Brian Wood wrote:
> > On Thursday 09 July 2009 20:19:34 Harry Devine wrote:
> >> The MB is an Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe with an nVidia nForce4 SLI x16
> >> chipset (from the MB manual).  I have an nVidia GeForce 9400GT video
> >> card in the PCI-e slot and a pcHDTV5500 tuner card in one of the regular
> >> PCI slots.  Both are working fine.  The SATA ports are on the MB itself
> >> as I mentioned earler.
> >
> > Can you look at your bootlog? Make sure it looks like yout SATA
> > controllers are being recognized and initialized properly?
> >
> > I'm not familiar with that precise chipset, though I have had good luck
> > with some of its progenitors.
> >
> > It would be interesting to know if things work OK with a PATA drive,
> > perhaps you could run the OS on that one and be able to give a good
> > workout/test to a SATA drive connected as a non-system drive.
> >
> > Asus generally makes decent boards. Make sure you have the latest BIOS
> > installed, sorry if that's obvious. I also assume (obviously) that you
> > are not overclocking and all timings are at default settings.
> >
> > Also check for interrupt conflicts.
>
> I'm not sure where the bootlog is, but I was able to mount the /var
> partition and looked at /var/log/messages.  I do see a lot of messages
> like so:

That is what I meant by the bootlog, I should have been more specific.

>
> Jul 6 22:41:12 hdevine-desktop kernel: [1429202.244693] ata1: hard
> resetting link
> Jul 6 22:41:12 hdevine-desktop kernel  [1429207.386529] ata1: failed due
> to HW bug, retry pmp=0
> Jul 6 22:41:12 hdevine-desktop kernel [1429207.560531] ata1: SATA link
> up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
> Jul 6 22:41:12 hdevine-desktop kernel [1429207.569392] ata1.00:SB600
> AHCI: limiting to 255 sectors per cmd
> Jul 6 22:41:12 hdevine-desktop kernel [1429207.570139] ata1.00:SB600
> AHCI: limiting to 255 sectors per cmd
> Jul 6 22:41:12 hdevine-desktop kernel [1429207.570145] ata1.00:
> configured for UDMA/33
> Jul 6 22:41:12 hdevine-desktop kernel [1429207.570162] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda]
> Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE,SUGGEST_OK
> Jul 6 22:41:12 hdevine-desktop kernel [1429207.570162] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda]
> Sense Key: Aborted Command [current][descriptor]
>
> This went on for a while, probably until I rebooted and had problems
> booting up.  This seems to point to a SATA issue on the MB, but I can't
> seem to figure out why I can see the drive on the SATA bus from the
> LiveCD, but can't boot from it.  Very strange, but I'm probably missing
> something.
>

I'd say you have located your problem. Either you have a serious hardware 
problem or the Linux you are trying to use can't deal with the hardware.

Often the kernel on a Live CD is different from the one that gets installed. 
If you have a kernel that can handle the hardware it means your problem is 
solveable.

I'd try and find out what module is getting loaded by the Live CD to handle 
the SATA interface (if it's a module and not compiled in).

There may be some parameter(s) you can pass to the kernel that will help.

Try Googling for that chipset and Linux problems.

A workaround might be a PCI SATA controller, wrong answer but it should work.

> Also, I checked on the Asus website and they give version 1409 as the
> BIOS firmware.  Well, I have 2201, so I have the latest from what I can
> gather.

Hmmm... Odd to have such a large discrepancy, I'd contact Asus about it.



-- 
Brian Wood
beww at beww.org