[mythtv-users] Mythtv recording filesystem (sata) goes read only

[Rich West]

Roger Heflin wrote:
> Which sata controller is on the MB?    Are there bios settings that control how 
> the sata controller acts?  And if so, have you tried the various bios settings 
> that control how the sata card acts?   The various bios options sometimes change 
> the driver needed (which may will very likely either change the error, or make 
> it go away completely), so make sure that you know how to do a rescue boot, and 
> rebuilt the initrd with the new driver.
>
> If you are getting that ATA error, you have a problem below the filesystem, 
> changing to a different file system will change what happens when you get the 
> error, but you will still get the error and have problems of some sort.
>
> It is also fairly unlikely to be a memory error, if you were just getting the 
> ext3 ro error, that could be memory.
>
> A full dmesg would be best for someone to determine what was happening.
>
>                          Roger

Thanks.. that's what I thought, that it was a level below the
filesystem, and I thought I might just end up trading one symptom for
another.  I did forget to mention that when the drive goes read-only, it
is actually completely inaccessible.  File system level stuff does not
work (ls, cd), and, although I can unmount the file system, I cannot
remount it.  Rebooting brings the world back in to order.

I haven't actually looked back in to the BIOS, but I will definitely
check that this evening.  The motherboard is:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130542.  The
driver is the sata_via driver.  All of my other systems use the same
driver, but none of them hit their sata drive as fiercely.

A larger snippet from the messages log is (dmesg gets cleared after reboot):
Apr  3 16:47:27 mythtv1 kernel: ata4.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0
SErr 0x0 action 0x2 frozen
Apr  3 16:47:27 mythtv1 kernel: ata4.00: cmd
c8/00:00:77:31:21/00:00:00:00:00/e1 tag 0 dma 131072 in
Apr  3 16:47:27 mythtv1 kernel:          res
40/00:01:00:4f:c2/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
Apr  3 16:47:27 mythtv1 kernel: ata4.00: status: { DRDY }
Apr  3 16:47:27 mythtv1 kernel: ata4: soft resetting link
Apr  3 16:47:57 mythtv1 kernel: ata4.00: qc timeout (cmd 0x27)
Apr  3 16:47:57 mythtv1 kernel: ata4.00: failed to read native max
address (err_mask=0x4)
Apr  3 16:47:57 mythtv1 kernel: ata4.00: HPA support seems broken, will
skip HPA handling
Apr  3 16:47:57 mythtv1 kernel: ata4.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
Apr  3 16:47:57 mythtv1 kernel: ata4: failed to recover some devices,
retrying in 5 secs
Apr  3 16:48:02 mythtv1 kernel: ata4: soft resetting link
Apr  3 16:48:02 mythtv1 kernel: ata4.00: configured for UDMA/133
Apr  3 16:48:02 mythtv1 kernel: ata4: EH complete
Apr  3 16:49:02 mythtv1 kernel: ata4.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0
SErr 0x0 action 0x2 frozen
Apr  3 16:49:02 mythtv1 kernel: ata4.00: cmd
c8/00:00:77:31:21/00:00:00:00:00/e1 tag 0 dma 131072 in
Apr  3 16:49:02 mythtv1 kernel:          res
40/00:01:00:4f:c2/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
Apr  3 16:49:02 mythtv1 kernel: ata4.00: status: { DRDY }
Apr  3 16:49:02 mythtv1 kernel: ata4: soft resetting link
Apr  3 16:49:03 mythtv1 kernel: ata4.00: configured for UDMA/133
Apr  3 16:49:03 mythtv1 kernel: ata4: EH complete

However, if this is below the level of the filesystem, then it
definitely isn't a mythtv software issue (and, hence, this is probably
the wrong forum (although I don't know where to turn from here).. I'd
hate to get flamed for going off the mythtv topic).  It just happens
that the main symptom is that it hoses my mythtv backend server process. :(

-Rich