Tiny Core Linux

General TC => General TC Talk => Topic started by: beerstein on April 10, 2011, 02:46:35 PM

Title: TC 3.6 rc on a SD-card-ATA adapter - after system halt - strange errors
Post by: beerstein on April 10, 2011, 02:46:35 PM
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
Title: Re: TC 3.6 rc on a SD-card-ATA adapter - after system halt - strange errors
Post by: curaga on April 11, 2011, 02:06:01 AM
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).
Title: Re: TC 3.6 rc on a SD-card-ATA adapter - after system halt - strange errors
Post by: TerryJC on April 11, 2011, 10:45:56 AM
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.
Title: Re: TC 3.6 rc on a SD-card-ATA adapter - after system halt - strange errors
Post by: curaga on April 11, 2011, 11:01:03 AM
TerryJC, your error is different: the hdc partition seems to be partially outside the drive.

Also, you can view these later in dmesg.
Title: Re: TC 3.6 rc on a SD-card-ATA adapter - after system halt - strange errors
Post by: gerald_clark on April 11, 2011, 11:46:01 AM
hdc is usually the CD/DVD drive, and often errors when the system probes it for a tce directory.
Title: Re: TC 3.6 rc on a SD-card-ATA adapter - after system halt - strange errors
Post by: TerryJC on April 12, 2011, 02:19:37 AM
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?
Title: Re: TC 3.6 rc on a SD-card-ATA adapter - after system halt - strange errors
Post by: curaga on April 12, 2011, 06:05:04 AM
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?
Title: Re: TC 3.6 rc on a SD-card-ATA adapter - after system halt - strange errors
Post by: beerstein on April 12, 2011, 06:11:20 AM
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.
Title: Re: TC 3.6 rc on a SD-card-ATA adapter - after system halt - strange errors
Post by: beerstein on April 12, 2011, 06:12:22 AM
yes - I will go back und look and post the results - thank you for that
Title: Re: TC 3.6 rc on a SD-card-ATA adapter - after system halt - strange errors
Post by: TerryJC on April 12, 2011, 06:21:47 AM
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.
Title: Re: TC 3.6 rc on a SD-card-ATA adapter - after system halt - strange errors
Post by: tinypoodle on April 12, 2011, 08:26:27 AM
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.
Title: Re: TC 3.6 rc on a SD-card-ATA adapter - after system halt - strange errors
Post by: gerald_clark on April 12, 2011, 01:40:02 PM
Do not format a flash drive ext3. Use ext2.
The ext3 journalling will wear out the drive.
Title: Re: TC 3.6 rc on a SD-card-ATA adapter - after system halt - strange errors
Post by: beerstein on April 13, 2011, 06:59:24 AM
thank you for this - makes sence to me - what do you think about RISER format.
Title: Re: TC 3.6 rc on a SD-card-ATA adapter - after system halt - strange errors
Post by: curaga on April 13, 2011, 07:05:05 AM
Reiser is also a journaling fs, so you shouldn't use it on usb sticks.
Title: Re: TC 3.6 rc on a SD-card-ATA adapter - after system halt - strange errors
Post by: tinypoodle on April 13, 2011, 08:38:09 AM
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.
Title: Re: TC 3.6 rc on a SD-card-ATA adapter - after system halt - strange errors
Post by: curaga on April 13, 2011, 08:46:03 AM
ext4 without journal: mkfs.ext4 -O ^has_journal /dev/sda1
Title: Re: TC 3.6 rc on a SD-card-ATA adapter - after system halt - strange errors
Post by: beerstein on April 14, 2011, 08:28:57 AM
 (ext4 without journal: mkfs.ext4 -O ^has_journal /dev/sda)

thank you for this. Does this mean that I can format from the terminal or command line:

$ mkfs ext4 -O /dev/sda1

does this command format ext4 as non journaling?

Now ext4 needs grub 2 as a bootloader.
Title: Re: TC 3.6 rc on a SD-card-ATA adapter - after system halt - strange errors
Post by: tinypoodle on April 14, 2011, 09:19:38 AM
Now ext4 needs grub 2 as a bootloader.

Recent versions of syslinux include ext4 support as well.
Title: Re: TC 3.6 rc on a SD-card-ATA adapter - after system halt - strange errors
Post by: curaga on April 14, 2011, 09:38:25 AM
(ext4 without journal: mkfs.ext4 -O ^has_journal /dev/sda)

thank you for this. Does this mean that I can format from the terminal or command line:

$ mkfs ext4 -O /dev/sda1

does this command format ext4 as non journaling?

Now ext4 needs grub 2 as a bootloader.


You forgot the actual option arg from your command ;)

Our grub1 does work with ext4.