Re: DMA is turned off on my HDD

[Florian Kulzer <florian.kulzer+debian@icfo.es>]

On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 20:59:09 +0300, Anton Liaukevich wrote:
> Anton Liaukevich wrote:
>> In several days I discovered that DMA is turned off on my HDD (fsck  
>> sayed it while Debian booting). Please, help me turn on DMA mode.
>>
>> My hardware:
>>     motherboard: Epox 8RDA3I rev 3.3 (nForce 2 Ultra)
>>     hdd: WD1200JB (ide, 120gb)
>>     cpu: Sempron 2200 (k7)
>>
>> My software:
>>     Debian lenny
>>     kernel: linux 2.6.24-1-686
>>     bootloader: grub 0.97-41
>>
>>
> Today I upgraded my linux kernel to 2.6.25-2-686, but problem hasn't  
> been solved yet.
>
> I'm giving you some lines about DMA from '/var/log/syslog' file.  
> Perhaps, this will help you to solve my problem:

[...]

> Jul 23 19:19:08 leva kernel: [    1.641566] Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE  
> driver
> Jul 23 19:19:08 leva kernel: [    1.641645] ide: Assuming 33MHz system  
> bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
> Jul 23 19:19:08 leva kernel: [    1.642286] Probing IDE interface ide0...
> Jul 23 19:19:08 leva kernel: [    2.057740] hda: WDC WD1200JB-00EVA0,  
> ATA DISK drive
> Jul 23 19:19:08 leva kernel: [    2.729277] Probing IDE interface ide1...
> Jul 23 19:19:08 leva kernel: [    3.592048] hdc: SONY CD-RW CRX320E,  
> ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
> Jul 23 19:19:08 leva kernel: [    4.263546] ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on  
> irq 14
> Jul 23 19:19:08 leva kernel: [    4.263546] ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on  
> irq 15
> ...
> Jul 23 19:19:08 leva kernel: [    5.859859] NFORCE2: 0000:00:09.0 (rev  
> a2) UDMA133 controller
> Jul 23 19:19:08 leva kernel: [    5.859938] NFORCE2: IDE controller  
> (0x10de:0x0065 rev 0xa2) at  PCI slot 0000:00:09.0

This is important information: the vendorID (10de NVIDIA) and the
deviceID (0065 NVIDIA_NFORCE2_IDE). You will get the same information by
running "lspci -nn" on the command line; it will be listed as
"[10de:0065]". This IDE controller seems to be supported by the amd74xx
driver in kernel 2.6.25 (according to the Debian driver check page at
http://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/).

> Jul 23 19:19:08 leva kernel: [    5.860054] NFORCE2: not 100% native  
> mode: will probe irqs later
> Jul 23 19:19:08 leva kernel: [    5.860129] NFORCE2: BIOS didn't set  
> cable bits correctly. Enabling workaround.
> Jul 23 19:19:08 leva kernel: [    5.860224] NFORCE2: port 0x01f0 already  
> claimed by ide0
> Jul 23 19:19:08 leva kernel: [    5.860296] NFORCE2: port 0x0170 already  
> claimed by ide1

The first thing to check is if your kernel loaded the correct modules;
please post the output of this command:

lsmod | grep -E 'amd74xx|ata|\bide'

Also, install the "hdparm" package if you don't have it already and run
"hdparm /dev/hda" as root. What response do you get? You can also try to
turn on DMA yourself with "hdparm -d1 /dev/hda"; maybe you will receive
a helpful error message.

-- 
Regards,            | http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer
          Florian   |