2.4.19 eat my disc (contents)

2.4.19 eat my disc (contents)

[Dr. David Alan Gilbert]

Hi,
  I've just lost the contents of my disc on my Alpha to 2.4.19 - be
careful! (luckily there wasn't anything important on it...or at least if
there was I can't remember what....)

Some details:
2.4.19 straight
Alpha 21164A on LX164 board
Compiled for LX164 architecture
Hard drive is an IBM 34GB Deathstar connected to the on board CMD646
controller.

It has been running Linux/Debian happily for ages; booted into 2.4.17,
compiled 2.4.19, booted into that and saw two problems;
  1) RTL8139 network card was identified but would not connect.  I got
	giant packet errors - it spitted out a 32 bit identifier which looked
	like it might have got some ASCII where some value should have lived.
	(It is an RTL8139 prior to the -c)

	2) I tried to go into the directory which I'd built the kernel in and
	found it didn't actually agree that it was a directory; but thought it
	was a file of many GB with odd permissions.  I unmounted the partition
	and fsck'd - lots of errors; most complaining of invalid blocks.
	debugfs seemed to indicate that lots of things in the inode had been
	cleared to -1 (size, uid, gid, pretty much everything).

	3) I hit reset and the AlphaBIOS came to the conclusion there was no
	OS and it looks like the partition table has gone to the great block
	in the sky.

All tools were from Debian/unstable; updated immediatly prior to the 
kernel build.

I'd give you a log and .config if it weren't for the fact that it has
just wiped itself from the disc. hdparm looked OK from the brief look;
I think it got the drive size right.  I had seen some DMA negotiation
alike errors go past during the boot.

Oh well - time to try the Debian/Woody install process on Alpha....

Dave

 ---------------- Have a happy GNU millennium! ----------------------   
/ Dr. David Alan Gilbert    | Running GNU/Linux on Alpha,68K| Happy  \ 
\ gro.gilbert @ treblig.org | MIPS,x86,ARM, SPARC and HP-PA | In Hex /
 \ _________________________|_____ http://www.treblig.org   |_______/

Re: 2.4.19 eat my disc (contents)

[Paul Slootman]

On Sun 11 Aug 2002, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote:

>   I've just lost the contents of my disc on my Alpha to 2.4.19 - be

That's not absolutely sure...

> All tools were from Debian/unstable; updated immediatly prior to the 
> kernel build.

It could of course be that during the update something trashed some
part of the disk, which only made itself apparent after the reboot.

Golden rule: only change one thing at a time...

My alpha's been running 2.4.19-rc2 for more than 3 weeks now without any
problems (the kernel also has my patches against unaligned accesses in
the kernel, for the packet filter and for netfilter).  I don't think
anything big would have been changed between rc2 and the final release,
so unless it's specific to the IDE driver (I use SCSI) I doubt the
kernel is the culprit.

Of course, this isn't any comfort for you; sorry about your trashed
system...


Paul Slootman

Re: 2.4.19 eat my disc (contents)

[Dr. David Alan Gilbert]

* Paul Slootman (paul@debian.org) wrote:
> On Sun 11 Aug 2002, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote:
> 
> >   I've just lost the contents of my disc on my Alpha to 2.4.19 - be
> 
> That's not absolutely sure...
> 
> > All tools were from Debian/unstable; updated immediatly prior to the 
> > kernel build.
> 
> It could of course be that during the update something trashed some
> part of the disk, which only made itself apparent after the reboot.
> 
> Golden rule: only change one thing at a time...

Sure; it was just a standard apt-get dist-upgrade (since I'd not run the
upgrade for a few weeks); not a major potato->woody transition or
anything.

> My alpha's been running 2.4.19-rc2 for more than 3 weeks now without any
> problems (the kernel also has my patches against unaligned accesses in
> the kernel, for the packet filter and for netfilter).  I don't think
> anything big would have been changed between rc2 and the final release,
> so unless it's specific to the IDE driver (I use SCSI) I doubt the
> kernel is the culprit.

I suspect the IDE driver; but that is difficult to tell.

Dave
 ---------------- Have a happy GNU millennium! ----------------------   
/ Dr. David Alan Gilbert    | Running GNU/Linux on Alpha,68K| Happy  \ 
\ gro.gilbert @ treblig.org | MIPS,x86,ARM, SPARC and HP-PA | In Hex /
 \ _________________________|_____ http://www.treblig.org   |_______/

Re: 2.4.19 eat my disc (contents)

[Måns Rullgård]

"Dr. David Alan Gilbert" <gilbertd@treblig.org> writes:

> > My alpha's been running 2.4.19-rc2 for more than 3 weeks now without any
> > problems (the kernel also has my patches against unaligned accesses in
> > the kernel, for the packet filter and for netfilter).  I don't think
> > anything big would have been changed between rc2 and the final release,
> > so unless it's specific to the IDE driver (I use SCSI) I doubt the
> > kernel is the culprit.
> 
> I suspect the IDE driver; but that is difficult to tell.

I've run 2.4.19-pre8 and up on a 164SX.  No problems there with ide on
promise 20268 or onboard cypress.

-- 
Måns Rullgård
mru@users.sf.net

Re: 2.4.19 eat my disc (contents)

[Andre Hedrick]

David,

Well before you start pointing bogus fingers again, you need to be sure.
Now since I only use -ac patches as a base, I do know there could be some
issues, but you can not execute that code path.  It is disabled.

If it eats Alpha, there are way more people then you who would be eating
my shorts and kicking my arse.

Cheers,

On Sun, 11 Aug 2002, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote:

> * Paul Slootman (paul@debian.org) wrote:
> > On Sun 11 Aug 2002, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote:
> > 
> > >   I've just lost the contents of my disc on my Alpha to 2.4.19 - be
> > 
> > That's not absolutely sure...
> > 
> > > All tools were from Debian/unstable; updated immediatly prior to the 
> > > kernel build.
> > 
> > It could of course be that during the update something trashed some
> > part of the disk, which only made itself apparent after the reboot.
> > 
> > Golden rule: only change one thing at a time...
> 
> Sure; it was just a standard apt-get dist-upgrade (since I'd not run the
> upgrade for a few weeks); not a major potato->woody transition or
> anything.
> 
> > My alpha's been running 2.4.19-rc2 for more than 3 weeks now without any
> > problems (the kernel also has my patches against unaligned accesses in
> > the kernel, for the packet filter and for netfilter).  I don't think
> > anything big would have been changed between rc2 and the final release,
> > so unless it's specific to the IDE driver (I use SCSI) I doubt the
> > kernel is the culprit.
> 
> I suspect the IDE driver; but that is difficult to tell.
> 
> Dave
>  ---------------- Have a happy GNU millennium! ----------------------   
> / Dr. David Alan Gilbert    | Running GNU/Linux on Alpha,68K| Happy  \ 
> \ gro.gilbert @ treblig.org | MIPS,x86,ARM, SPARC and HP-PA | In Hex /
>  \ _________________________|_____ http://www.treblig.org   |_______/
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
> 

Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group

Re: 2.4.19 eat my disc (contents)

[Dhr N. Van Alphen]

go install again and boot after each little step wich might been the
problem,
then u should know what caused it, and post the real bug here.
There are too many possibilities now.

Niek van alphen.
MasteX@servicez.org


----- Original Message -----
From: "Dr. David Alan Gilbert" <gilbertd@treblig.org>
To: <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Cc: <axp-list@redhat.com>; <debian-alpha@lists.debian.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 11, 2002 7:52 PM
Subject: 2.4.19 eat my disc (contents)


> Hi,
>   I've just lost the contents of my disc on my Alpha to 2.4.19 - be
> careful! (luckily there wasn't anything important on it...or at least if
> there was I can't remember what....)
>
> Some details:
> 2.4.19 straight
> Alpha 21164A on LX164 board
> Compiled for LX164 architecture
> Hard drive is an IBM 34GB Deathstar connected to the on board CMD646
> controller.
>
> It has been running Linux/Debian happily for ages; booted into 2.4.17,
> compiled 2.4.19, booted into that and saw two problems;
>   1) RTL8139 network card was identified but would not connect.  I got
> giant packet errors - it spitted out a 32 bit identifier which looked
> like it might have got some ASCII where some value should have lived.
> (It is an RTL8139 prior to the -c)
>
> 2) I tried to go into the directory which I'd built the kernel in and
> found it didn't actually agree that it was a directory; but thought it
> was a file of many GB with odd permissions.  I unmounted the partition
> and fsck'd - lots of errors; most complaining of invalid blocks.
> debugfs seemed to indicate that lots of things in the inode had been
> cleared to -1 (size, uid, gid, pretty much everything).
>
> 3) I hit reset and the AlphaBIOS came to the conclusion there was no
> OS and it looks like the partition table has gone to the great block
> in the sky.
>
> All tools were from Debian/unstable; updated immediatly prior to the
> kernel build.
>
> I'd give you a log and .config if it weren't for the fact that it has
> just wiped itself from the disc. hdparm looked OK from the brief look;
> I think it got the drive size right.  I had seen some DMA negotiation
> alike errors go past during the boot.
>
> Oh well - time to try the Debian/Woody install process on Alpha....
>
> Dave
>
>  ---------------- Have a happy GNU millennium! ----------------------
> / Dr. David Alan Gilbert    | Running GNU/Linux on Alpha,68K| Happy  \
> \ gro.gilbert @ treblig.org | MIPS,x86,ARM, SPARC and HP-PA | In Hex /
>  \ _________________________|_____ http://www.treblig.org   |_______/
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>