Very weird behaviour - hardware failure ?
I wonder, if he were alive today, would Galileo have used my monitor and
computer instead of an apple and a feather to experiment with gravity. I
think I would.
My system is behaving very strangely since I installed Debian. I had
Slackware on my box before and it seemed to behave as one would expect. I
was despondent at first because it seemed that I could not configure
Debian to behave as I come to expect with Slackware. Now I suspect
something far more insidious and hope someone out there will recognize the
problem. In short, am I experiencing a hardware failure ?
The symptoms involve hda errors, kernel panics, making a ppp connection
with PAP, and freaky xdm light shows. Personally I am beginning to
suspect that my hard disk has gone, but don't know enough to say for sure.
Maybe something else is going that makes it look like the HD has gone.
Maybe its software somewhere.
Symptom # 1 Preparing my Linux partitions for the Deb install.
When initializing an ext2 Linux native partition with a bad-block
scan things started out fine with
checking for bad blocks (read only test): xxxxxx/542776
but then things started to get nasty and I got messages like the following
interspersed with the above message
hda: read_intr: status=0x59 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest Error ]
hda: read_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect = xxxxxxxxx,
sector=yyyyyyy
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:07, sector yyyyyyy
I got about a gazillion of these error messages. At first I thought that
all of a sudden something had happened to my disk that was causing blocks
to go bad, but I am no longer so sure. I did get the install finished and
Debian seemed to be working.
Symptom # 2 Disappearing DOS partitions
Before I installed Linux I had DOS primary partition and an extended
partition containing two logical drives. When I bought the computer, I
knew I would be installing Linux, so I only used about a third of the disk
for these DOS partitions. I didn't have to use fips or anything similar
to get ready for Linux.
After installing Linux everything seemed hunky-dory. I could access C:,
D:, and E: from both Linux and form DOS or Windoze 3.1. Then one day, in
windoze I went to File Manager to look for something on D:, and neither D:
nor E: was visible -- no little driver icon to click on on the driver icon
bar.
I can still see them from Linux however.
Symptom # 3 Seeming random hd i/o timeouts
I can't remember the exact message to this error and can not find where I
wrote it. But it was hard disk i/o timeouts that started with "hda:
status error" or somesuch, then said "hda: drive not ready for command"
then something or other about resetting and things being okay. This never
caused a crash or anything but happened doing things like an "ls". I
could get these messages in the middle of a directory listing if the
directory was long.
I haven't had this problem for awhile.
Sympton # 4 Kernel Panics
I foolishly didn't write down all of these and now can't remember what I
was doing when these panics happened. They were always during ordinary
things though. The most recent happened when I was trying to get my new
ppp connection setup with pppd and chat. I was just testing a new script
and whammo! Dirty powerdown.
Just found a message from one of the first times this happened
message from syslogd
Kernel: Kernel panic: EXT2 fs panic (device 03:07): ext2_read_inode: unable
to read i-node block - inode = xxxxxxxx, block= yyyyyyyyy
When I tried to shutdown -r now I got
hda: status error: status=0x59 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest Error ]
hda: status error: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError }, LBAsect = xxxxxxxxx,
sector=yyyyyyy
end_request: I/O error, dev 03:07, sector yyyyyyy
got that four times then
hda: drive not ready for command
bash: /sbin/shutdown: I/O error
Symptom # 5 pppd not working
I'm not sure if this one is me or my new ISP (not the freenet) but I will
mention it anyway. pppd connects, I get assigned my IP address, ifconfig
reports the ppp0 interface and the lo interface, and route -n reports the
host, the local loopback and the gateway. Then I can do nothing. Can't
telnet, ftp or browse known sights, can't even ping the host I am
connected to and it can not ping me (talked to my ISP). No one else seems
to having problems. The server was happily working with other dial-in
clients while we spoke and the ISP was able to ping them. This is a
connection that was working.
Then as I mentioned in the above symptom, a kernel panic was provoked.
Symptom # 6 xdm light show
The latest in this series of frustrating little phenomena is the strobe
effect I was getting from xdm. From xdm I did a control-alt-F1 to get
back to the console. I was going to shutdown but then wanted to go back
to xdm to do something. I hit alt-F7 as I have down in the past. The
screen did the flicker thing it does when xdm is starting, then flickered
back to the console then to xdm and I was caught in a handy little cycle
that I could not stop (cleanly). All the while I could hear my hd arm or
whatever makes those little grinding sounds humming in rhythm with the
flicker of the screen. I tried control-C and just giving the shutdown
command anyway.
Had to hit the restart button and do an fsck. When I went to start xdm
from a fresh boot after a clean shutdown, ie. xdm was the first thing I
typed after login, the flickering started and I could not start xdm nor do
anything else.
Please help. I now have the fsck and its switches memorized. This is a
command I would rather be forced to look up when needed than to have
commited to memory.
What is wrong ? These things have been happening with increasing
frequency and increasing diversity. I have this sinking feeling in the
pit of my wallet that it is my only slightly more than a year old hd.
Any thoughts ?
Thanks in advance,
Gerald
ye416@freenet.victoria.bc.ca
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