Re: DVD-RAM crashing system

[Svein Ove Aas <svein.ove@aas.no>]

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fredag 18. juli 2003, 22:06, skrev Nachman Yaakov Ziskind:
> Anyone out there with tips on how to resolve this? Perhaps I can
> force the kernel to think that DMA has been disabled?

No tips, I'm afraid, but don't even *think* about doing that.
As the technician said, the problem is with the chipset not accepting commands 
properly; fortunately, the kernel appears to catch the situation and avoid 
(potential) severe damage.

Forcing the kernel to act as if DMA is fully disabled when in fact it isn't 
sounds like a very bad idea indeed; the best you could probably hope for is 
to have the machine crash without losing any data.


My suggestion is this: As the hardware is obviously broken, and disabling DMA 
would cause a horrendous performance drop anyway, you should get a new 
chipset. Return the one you have as broken.

If that isn't an option, for whatever reason, you might try switching to a 
lower-speed DMA mode using hdparm. Something like "hdparm -Xudma0 /dev/hdx" 
might help, if you're lucky.

- - Svein Ove Aas
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