Re: rc6 keeps hanging and blanking displays where rc4-mm1 works fine.

[Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz <bzolnier@gmail.com>]

On 8/12/05, Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
> On Gwe, 2005-08-12 at 12:01 +0200, Helge Hafting wrote:
> > solveable by resizing.  But the machine will occationally hang, forcing
> > me to
> > use the reset button.  I lost my mbox file to this (from an ext3 fs, on
> > raid-1 on scsi.)
> 
> Unless you are using data=journal and have turned write cache off on
> your IDE drives that is expected. Metadata journalling protects your
> file system intgerity. Data journalling is more expensive but will
> protect your file integrity if the disk layer is also correctly set up.
> Unfortunately the IDE layer defaults the wrong way and despite many
> complaints has not been changed. In later 2.6 with modern drives you can

Changing defaults is not that easy, disabling write-cache shortens HDD
life considerably (discussed on LKML).

Recommend solution is to disable write-cache w/ hdparm or use barrier mode.

> also enable barrier mode on the IDE layer which gives better results
> than turning off the write cache.