Re: Dreaded PDC irq nobody cared

[Erik Slagter <erik@slagter.name>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1961 bytes --]

On Thu, 2005-10-06 at 15:09 +0900, Tejun Heo wrote:

> >>> - is there any chance booting with noapic would make a difference? I
> >>>must say my apic is a bit flaky (according to the logs)
> >>
> >>BTW I tried noapic, it did seem to work for two days, but then again
> >>crashed with the same problem :-(
> >  
> > I have played around a little more and found these interesting results.
> > 
> >  - The difference between having or having not the stuck interrupt seems
> > to be the forced cooling of the attached harddisks; I find this also
> > very hard to believe, but it is very reproducable; so to anyone having
> > problems with the promise sata controllers I'd recommend buying
> > dedicated harddisk coolers.

> >  - I did a test run with disabling of "stuck" interrupts disabled and I
> > can say: the interrupt is really stuck, it's no kernel bug; after some
> > time I rebooted and the controller (or harddisk) still was in a confused
> > state (no booting possible at all), only after an hour it started
> > working again; indeed looks like a heat problem.
> 
>   Sounds like you got a faulty drive or really bad ventilation in your case.

That would be the logical conclusion.

What puzzles me still is:

 - various people have this problem with various brands and models disks
 - the temperature of the disks is ~40 C, without cooling, and also ~40
C with cooling (?!) according to smartctl attribute 195, so either the
temperature sensors are wrong (silly location?) or it really doesn't
matter?!
 - I cannot pinpoint the problem to one harddisk, and probably never
will, because the problem only occurs with > 1 harddisk
connected :-( (as the other people experience)
 - the temperature in the case is not very cool but also not extremely
hot, imho it shouldn't bother the harddisks.

I am very interested in the experiences of the other people that have
problems with the promise sata controller cards.

[-- Attachment #2: smime.p7s --]
[-- Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature, Size: 2115 bytes --]