Re: New IDE code and DMA failures

[Ted Deppner <ted@psyber.com>]

On Thu, Apr 11, 2002 at 03:39:33PM -0200, Denis Vlasenko wrote:
> I have a flaky IDE subsystem in one box. Reads work fine,
> writes sometimes don't work and hang either IDE/block device
> 
> Please inform me whenever you want me to test your patches.

I've been testing 2.4.17 and 2.4.19-pre6 and see some similar issues.  I
have an Asus A7V w/ 1gig Athlon processor.  Using the onboard Promise
UDMA100 controller, I can read and write all day long to /dev/hde all by
itself...  However, after few minutes of any type of access to /dev/hdh,
/dev/hde suddenly starts having DMA errors and switches to PIO.  I'm on my
third DMA66 cable (yet it fights tightly), and am still seeing the exact
same issues.  I don't believe my IDE subsystem to be flaky.  hde is a WD
drive, and hdh is a Maxtor.

In one of my tests the contents /dev/hdh was additionally corrupted (a
write test to /dev/hdh1) so badly that the partion information changed
from type 83 to type 3 (Xenix), and the contents of a reiser partition so
badly damaged that a --rebuild-tree and later a --rebuild-sb to reiserfsck
didn't restore it to usable. (I put those options in at the request of
reiserfsck, and I haven't wiped the drive yet if someone would like
further tests against the reiserfs partition).

-- 
Ted Deppner
http://www.psyber.com/~ted/