Re: MD/RAID time out writing superblock

Tejun Heo
2009-08-31T12:21:50Z

Ric Wheeler wrote:
>>> The drive might take a longer time like this when doing error handling
>>> (sector remapping, etc), but then I would expect to see your remapped
>>> sector count grow.
>>>
>> Yes, this is a possibility and according to the spec, libata EH should
>> be retrying flushes a few times before giving up but I'm not sure
>> whether keeping retrying for several minutes is a good idea either.
>> Is it?
>
> I don't think that retrying for minutes is a good idea. I wonder if this
> could be caused by power issues or cable issues to the drive?

IIRC, there were two identified weird reasons for flush timeouts. The
first was quirky firmware which meant that using NCQ meant timeouts on
FLUSH. The second was flaky power. So, yeah, it can be caused by
power issue. Not so sure about cable tho.

Thanks.

--
tejun