Re: bio too big device

Jens Axboe
2003-03-12T15:55:54Z

On Wed, Mar 12 2003, Andries Brouwer wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 04:51:05PM +0100, Jens Axboe wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 12 2003, Andries Brouwer wrote:
> > > On Wed, Mar 12, 2003 at 11:14:14AM +0100, Jens Axboe wrote:
> > >
> > > > So I still think it's much better stick with the safe choice. Why do you
> > > > think it's only one drive that has this bug? It basically boils down to
> > > > whether That Other OS uses 256 sector commands or not. If it doesn't, I
> > > > wouldn't trust the drives one bit.
> > >
> > > I am not quite sure I understand your reasoning.
> > > We have seen *zero* drives that do not understand 256 sector commands.
> > > Maybe such drives exist, but so far there is zero evidence.
> >
> > Have you read the thread? You are obviously mistaken.
>
> Usually I am not, but I am happy to be corrected.
> Please point out the facts.
>
> What I have seen is Paul Gortmaker, who reported on an old disk
> that showed errors with 256 sector transfers. In an early post
> he thought that that just was because the drive did not understand
> 256-sector transfers, in a later post he reported that in fact
> 256-sector transfers worked but that it was possible to
> provoke a problem by having heavy load for an hour with
> 256-sector transfers.
>
> I have an old drive that works fine but after three crashes
> at 4 in the morning I decided that the load of updating
> the locate database was more than it could handle.
> Heavy load is something that kills many a machine.

Either the drive has the bug or not. I seriously doubt that 256 vs 248
sectors would put any extra strain on the drive.

If there's no real precedent wrt 256 sector bug in _any_ drive, then I'm
fine with that change. Remember that we _did_ have it that way for a
while, it was only changed back because of apparent problems. If those
problems turn out to be non-existant, then the error was changing it
away from 256 in the first place.

--
Jens Axboe