OBUNTU: new kernel; new failures

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Mon, Jun 02, 2008 at 09:09:35PM -0400, Paul King wrote:
> UBUNTU has just installed a new kernel. I have recently noted that I
> have been getting errors in /var/log/messages and /var/log/syslog about
> 20-40 seconds apart. Here is a sample of the messages:
> 
> ???========8< SNIP 8<=============8< SNIP 8<======================
> 
> Jun  2 21:01:51 aragorn kernel: [185885.129183] ata4.01: exception Emask
> 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x2 frozen
> Jun  2 21:01:51 aragorn kernel: [185885.129209] ata4.01: cmd
> a0/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/b0 tag 0
> Jun  2 21:01:51 aragorn kernel: [185885.129211]          cdb 00 00 00 00
> 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
> Jun  2 21:01:51 aragorn kernel: [185885.129214]          res
> 40/00:03:00:08:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
> Jun  2 21:01:51 aragorn kernel: [185885.129219] ata4.01: status:
> { DRDY }
> Jun  2 21:01:51 aragorn kernel: [185885.129257] ata4: soft resetting
> link
> Jun  2 21:02:23 aragorn kernel: [185916.970328] ata4.00: configured for
> UDMA/33
> Jun  2 21:02:23 aragorn kernel: [185917.149782] ata4.01: configured for
> PIO0
> Jun  2 21:02:23 aragorn kernel: [185917.149817] ata4: EH complete
> 
> ========8< SNIP 8<=============8< SNIP 8<======================
> 
> This gives me a creepy feeling that one of my hard drives are failing.
> Can anyone interpret these messages and tell me for sure? What is
> "ata4.0x", where x is an integer? Frankly, these errors may have existed
> before the install; it's just the first time I've noticed it.
> 
> I am using kernel version "2.6.24-17-generic", freshly installed.

2.6.24 has some serious issues with some chipsets for disk access, so it
is quite likely a kernel problem, and not hardware in this case.

Going back to 2.6.22 or earlier seems fine for many people, and 2.6.25
also seems to fix most of it, although a few may have to wait until
2.6.26 to have it all in order again.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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