Re: Problem with ata layer in 2.6.24

[Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>]

> The SCSI error reporting really ought to include a simple interpretation 
> of the error for end users ("The drive doesn't support this command" "A 
> sector's data got lost" "The drive timed out" "The drive failed" "The 
> drive is entirely gone"). There's too much similarity between the message 
> you get when you try a SMART test that doesn't apply to the drive and what 
> you get when the drive is broken.

That would be the SCSI verbose messages option. I think the Eric
Youngdale consortium added it about Linux 1.2. Nowdays its always built
that way.

> And it's possible that the error recovery is suboptimal in some cases. It 
> seems to like resetting drives too much; perhaps if it keeps seeing the 
> same problem and resetting the drive, it should decide that the drive's 
> error reporting is just bad and just ignore that error like the old IDE 
> did (but, in this case, after saying what it's doing).

Nothing like casually praying the users data hasn't gone for a walk is
there. If we don't act on them the users don't report them until
something really bad occurs so that isn't an option.

Alan