running short on DMA buffers during badblocks
When I give the following command to do a DESTRUCTIVE bad block check:
badblocks -o 11.bb -b 4096 -v -w /dev/sda11
the following message appears repeatedly on the console:
Warning - running *really* short on DMA buffers
However, the test seems to proceed normally. Is this a problem? Each time the
message appears, it repeats a half dozen times immediately, and then the half
dozen repetitions come again ten or twenty seconds later. The message only
seems to happen while writing to the drive, not while reading.
(DON'T run the above command on a device that has data you care about. The -w
option of badblocks checks the disk by writing various patterns to the raw
sector of the partition and reading them back. It will erase any existing
filesystem.)
/dev/sda is a Quantum Atlas III 36 GB Ultra160 SCSI disk. The SCSI host bus
adapter is an Adaptec 29160 for Macintosh. I'm pretty sure it's the same as a
29160 for PCs except that is has some firmware that's only used during boot and
by the Mac OS.
The Mac is a power macintosh 8500 with a 350 Mhz PowerLogix CPU upgrade, I think
160 MB of RAM.
It's running Linux 2.4.19, I think with the powerpc patch. Possibly it's got
the benh patch, I don't know because I don't have my kernel sources online right
now.
/dev/sda11 is 16.7 GB in size.
I will probably upgrade my kernel once I'm done with the installation of my new
drive.
Thanks for any advice you can give me.
Mike
--
Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc. - Expert Software Development and Consulting
http://www.goingware.com
crawford@goingware.com
Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.
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