[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Help requested: DMA, Seagate ST340014A, Kernel 2.4



> Date: Today 09:04:28
>
> Greetings, all.
>
> I'm running Debian stable, and I've been running the 2.2 kernel series
> for some time now, because I've never had very good luck getting DMA to
> work for my hard drive under the 2.4 series.  However, with sarge's
> release appearing increasingly imminent, I need to try to get this
> resolved.  Google has, unfortunately, completely let me down on this.

> The hard drive is a Seagate ST340014A, and it's plugged into the main
> IDE controller on my motherboard, a Tyan Tiger MPX S2466.  According to
> the manufacturer, this uses the AMD-760 MPX chipset.  As far as I can
> tell, I've configured my kernel correctly, but I'm still having serious
> problems that occasionally result in filesystem corruption.

> <snip>

> I would greatly appreciate any suggestions that anyone might have.

> Thanks much,

> Richard

I feel you pain, but since I only have a Tyan mp 2460 our hardware is a little 
bit different. I am running testing with a 2.6 kernel, and am having no 
problems. That being said I also use a journaling file system.  I have used 
ext3, and assume you are using ext2, what kernel parameters are you pasing to 
the kernel? I use the noapic and acpi=off with good results, but some people 
can not tell the difference. Is their a reason you have not tried a 2.6 
kernel? I know you are using woody, but you might want to consider upgrading, 
if you decide to go to sarge.

A while back I did have some weird problems with a 2.4.25 kernel, could never 
figure it out either, I was using a Reiserfs and got some corruption, but to 
be honest I believe its chipset related.  Here is why, in  this system I have 
a CrystalFontz LCD which I use to monitor different systems specs. My 
harddrive is on a  single primary, and I have two other drives sharing 
another IDE, durring heavy system use, say I use unrar, burning a CD or 
something else, sometimes in my system logs and on screen I get, serial line 
busy and it shuts down my Crystal Fontz LCD.  Then if I try to restart it, 
like normal it won't come up, I have to go to init1, even then it sometimes 
does not comeup, until I reboot.  So it would not surprise me if the chipset 
is flakey, also do you use a usb mouse, or keyboard? I know for at least the 
mp 2460 just having this has been know to lock the system up.

I would suggest trying a 2.6 kernel, if your using testing or sarge, and just 
apt-get the k7 smp kernel image and see how it works with your DMA settings. 
Also I know that some mp mpx motherboards do not like certain graphics cards, 
I had a Nvidia 5600 ultra, and worked in mine, but Tyan does not support the 
FX series on my board. http://forums.pcper.com/showthread.php?t=265196 since 
then I switched back to a geforce2, that I rebuilt, put that ultra in a 
single cpu system, which is used to play Doom3.

As far as knowing a silver bullet for fixing DMA in 2.4, I am at a loss other 
than what I said above.

Rthoreau



Reply to: