Re: ext3fs errors with kernel 2.6.18 but not with 2.4.27

[Nate Duehr <nate@natetech.com>]

Francois Duranleau wrote:
> On 8/3/07, Brad Sawatzky <brad+debian@swatter.net> wrote:
> > Perhaps I misunderstood, but I thought he got the errors with the old
> > kernel (and had for a long time) but they did not trigger a filesystem
> > check.  My hunch was that the 2.6.x IDE driver (or ext3 driver) is handling
> > the error condition in a different way.  Perhaps not retrying at all on the
> > CRC error, or maybe having a shorter time-out on the retry, who knows...
> >
> > If he only gets the errors under 2.6.x and not 2.4.27 then it looks more
> > like a driver issue.  Perhaps his 2.6.x kernel is using the new 'merged'
> > SATA+PATA subsystem to handle his PATA drive instead of the old ATA/ATAPI
> > driver and that is causing the problem.
>
> It seems like I wasn't clear. Let me try to clarify:
>
> On 2.4.27, I get the CRC errors (not at boot time, later, and all the
> time thereafter),
> and I've been having them for many years. I mentionned just in case
> there might be
> a link with my problem. Otherwise, I am not trying to solve this
> particular problem.

Time to fix the root-cause problem.  Get the CRC errors to stop on the 
old kernel first.

> On 2.6.x, at boot time, errors are reported on the initial filesystem
> check. I do
> not know if I still have those CRC errors.

Fix problem #1... then fix problem #2... (GRIN)...

You're lucky.

Most times I've seen CRC errors like that, serious corruption was 
happening on the disk and or the disk itself was about to take a nose-dive.

There's no way I would have EVER let low-level errors like CRC errors go 
on for as long as you have.  They'd be a performance hit, if nothing 
else... but at that low a level, if CRC is having to "rescue" you from 
IDE bus problems... regularly... that's just downright dangerous to run 
anything important that way for any length of time.

It's logging the errors for a reason... clean 'em up!  (GRIN)

Nate