TC 3.6 rc on a SD-card-ATA adapter - after system halt - strange errors

[beerstein]

Hi: Hope somebody can help.
I am using a 4 GB SD-card to ATA adapter for a frugal install on hda1 (which is actually the SD card).
I also boot with grub from hda1. Everthing works great - no moving parts - low power consumption

When I shut down I get the following error messages on the screen:

hda: task-no-data-intr: status=0x51 { DriveReadySeakCompleteError }
hda:  task-no-data-intr: status=0x04 { DriveStatusError]
hda: possibly failed opcode 0xe0
System halted

this error messeges do not show up, when I reboot.
 Can I put something into /opt//shutdown.sh
to get around theses error messages

the SD card has a 2GB ext3 partition plus a 0.7 GB FAT 32 partition
/tce  , /home ; /boot  and /opt are sitting on the ext3 partition

After this error messages and a complete sht down the BIOS has problems
to recognize the SD card via the ATA adaptor. This SD cards sitting on these adaptors work great..
The SD card is hot swapable - that is what the manufacturer says - I did not try it yet

[curaga]

These errors mean your HW is failing (the IDE chip, the IDE cable, IDE-SD adapter, or the SD card).

I would start by ruling out the easiest of those, the SD card or the adapter.


Or perhaps the adapter is a low quality one, maybe you need to force a lower speed? (disable dma for example).

[TerryJC]

These errors mean your HW is failing (the IDE chip, the IDE cable, IDE-SD adapter, or the SD card).

Hmmm.  I just downloaded and booted 3.6 RC2 and am getting similar, (but not identical) errors.  However, these occur at boot-up, not shut-down.  My setup doesn't include an SD-card; it's just a common or garden HDD.  Not only that, I'm getting very similar errors on two machines.  I have checked the MD5 sum.

The first machine is my TC development machine which already has a hard disk installation of TC 3.5 on it.  This has four partitions; the earlier installation with a swap partition and two ext3 partitions for data storage.  One of the latter partitions (sdc) is currently empty, but formatted ext3.

The second machine is a windows laptop with just the one partition.  Neither machine has exhibited these errors before, so I'm at a loss to see where they're coming from, apart from TC itself.  Here's what I get from the TC dev machine:

Errors on boot up:
Buffer I/O error on device hdc, logical block 5426:
hdc: task-no-data-intr: status=0x51 { DriveReadySeakCompleteError }
hdc:  task-no-data-intr: status=0x30 { LastFailedSense=0x30 ]
hdc: possibly failed opcode 0x30
end-request: I/O error, dev hdc, sector 21704

The Windows box doesn't have a TC partition on it, so it doesn't pause during boot-up for long enough for me to read anything in detail.  However, I'm pretty sure that the message is very similar.

[curaga]

TerryJC, your error is different: the hdc partition seems to be partially outside the drive.

Also, you can view these later in dmesg.

[gerald_clark]

hdc is usually the CD/DVD drive, and often errors when the system probes it for a tce directory.

[TerryJC]

hdc is usually the CD/DVD drive, and often errors when the system probes it for a tce directory.

Interesting.  I hadn't realised that.  What is particularly interesting is that this didn't occur with earlier versions of TC when I booted the LiveDisc (I would have queried it then if it had) and it doesn't occur when I boot to my HD installation.  I'm certain of this, because I just booted an old V3.3 disc that happened to be lying around and there were no errors whatsoever during boot-up.

Is there any reason why it should suddenly start occurring?

[curaga]

There may be a change in rebuildfstab that now scans the cd drive too. Could you perhaps see if you can isolate the version where the errors start appearing?

[beerstein]

HI: Thank you so much for this.
meanwhile I came across some other error messages with this SD card.
One said something like: "problems with partition table" - /dev/loop0: does not contain a valid partition table
fdisk cant open /dev/ramzswap0: permission denied

Thes SD cards are sold with FAT 32 in one 3.9GB partition. They have some code on it at the
beginning of the partition. After plugging this SD in the first time I tried to partition with gparted.
There is a swich on the side of the SD where you can block it. (read only - I guess)

When it comes to repartitioning that thing it gets critical?

Question: The partition table is set up for DOS. But when I try to format hda1 as ext3 do I need to change the
MBR to another system. There are several options to choose from: DOS, BSD, plus several other options
May I leave the partition table as DOS although I am using ext3 in hda1?

I am aware that hda1 must be made active and boot.

[beerstein]

yes - I will go back und look and post the results - thank you for that

[TerryJC]

There may be a change in rebuildfstab that now scans the cd drive too. Could you perhaps see if you can isolate the version where the errors start appearing?

Unfortunately, I'm a little busy on another project at the moment and I only have V 3.3 lying around to do this with (I distinctly remember throwing all the other CDs away about a week or so ago    ).

However, I hadn't seen this problem until 3.6 RC2 (I didn't try RC1), and I did use 3.4 and 3.5, so this leads me to believe that it might be new for this release.

When I get a little time, I'll burn a few old discs and try it, but that may not be for some time.

[tinypoodle]

Question: The partition table is set up for DOS. But when I try to format hda1 as ext3 do I need to change the
MBR to another system. There are several options to choose from: DOS, BSD, plus several other options
May I leave the partition table as DOS although I am using ext3 in hda1?

DOS is fine.

[gerald_clark]

Do not format a flash drive ext3. Use ext2.
The ext3 journalling will wear out the drive.

[beerstein]

thank you for this - makes sence to me - what do you think about RISER format.

[curaga]

Reiser is also a journaling fs, so you shouldn't use it on usb sticks.

[tinypoodle]

Only with a recent web search I happened to learn that many seem to successfully use reiserfs on flash memory mounted with the "nolog" option - so journaling is avoided.
Possible advantages over ext2: performance and increased space efficiency.