Thanks, keefaz

for your post. In Slackware-10.1 as well as in Mandrake-9.2, the output of lspci | grep -i ide is:

00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE]

Any ideas ?

realnerd

Do you have DMA enabled? Maybe the disk es getting out of sync but that should slow all the system.

Another thing which I doubt but could be possible is that your fs got corrupted at some point and can't recover from that. fsck should take care of that, but.. who knows

Hi gbonvehi,

sorry but how do I know if I have DMA enabled ?

realnerd

OK, i have found on the net the following command:

hdparm -i /dev/hda

It gives:

/dev/hda:

Model=SAMSUNG SV0602H, FwRev=RH100-10, SerialNo=0451J1DT901651
Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=34902, SectSize=554, ECCbytes=4
BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=117304992
IORDY=yes, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5
AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 1:

* signifies the current active mode

Is it giving the relevant information ?

realnerd

Also please, try to note the output of dmesg | grep -i ide
on both mandrake and slackware after they boot, this way
we can see if they use the same IDE driver or not

I see from your hdparm output, that multiple sector I/O is enabled
in your drive, the hdparm man page says that some drives claim to
support multiple mode, but lose data at some settings and under
rare circumstances, such failures can result in massive filesystem
corruption.

I don't know if it is relevant though, and I think the ide driver is
enough smart to enable or disable this feature itself at boot.
(assuming of course you don't use hdparm settings in /etc/rc.d/rc.local
or similar)

Maybe you should try to set multiple mode support off with :
hdparm -m 0 /dev/hda

Also it would be interesting to see the same hdparm -i /dev/hda
output from mandrake

Hi keefaz, hi egag,

I'm back home now and these are the data requested:

Mandrake dmesg | grep -i ide:
--------------------------------

Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=Mandrake-9.2 ro root=306 hdc=ide-scsi
ide_setup: hdc=ide-scsi
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta4-2.4
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
SIS5513: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:02.5
SIS5513: SiS 962/963 MuTIOL IDE UDMA133 controller
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xb400-0xb407, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xb408-0xb40f, BIOS settings: hdcMA, hddMA
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: attached ide-disk driver.
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: p1 p2 < p5 p6 p7 p8 p9 p10 >
ide: late registration of driver.
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,6), internal journal
hdc: attached ide-scsi driver.
scsi1 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
hdd: attached ide-cdrom driver.
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,8), internal journal
eth0: Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8139C'

Slackware dmesg | grep -i ide:
---------------------------------

BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
Kernel command line: auto BOOT_IMAGE=SLK-10.1 ro root=309 hdc=ide-scsi
ide_setup: hdc=ide-scsi
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta4-2.4
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
SIS5513: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:02.5
SIS5513: SiS 962/963 MuTIOL IDE UDMA133 controller
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xb400-0xb407, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xb408-0xb40f, BIOS settings: hdcMA, hddMA
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: attached ide-disk driver.
hdd: attached ide-cdrom driver.
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,9), internal journal
hdc: attached ide-scsi driver.
scsi0 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,10), internal journal
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.19, 19 August 2002 on ide0(3,8), internal journal
eth0: Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8100B/8139D'

Mandrake lspci | grep -i ide:
------------------------------

00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE]

Slackware lspci | grep -i ide:
------------------------------

00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE]

Does it give any useful information?

Thanks for your patience,

realnerd

Thanks for the infos, from that we can see they use the same IDE driver

Now a last test would be the output of hdparm -i /dev/hda from mandrake
(we have already the hdparm output from slackware)

For the moment I suspect the multiple mode setting that is responsible
for your ext3 fs problem, but I don't really know

Hi keefaz,

here is the output of hdparm -i /dev/hda in Mandrake:

/dev/hda:

Model=SAMSUNG SV0602H, FwRev=RH100-10, SerialNo=0451J1DT901651
Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=34902, SectSize=554, ECCbytes=4
BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=117304992
IORDY=yes, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5
AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 1:

* signifies the current active mode

Does it confirm your hypothesis?

realnerd

No, it just destroy my hypothesis

I can't figure out of my little head, what could be your drive problem...
Sorry for asking again but could you post some of the errors you get ?

Hi keefaz,

this evening the same phenomenon occurred, I will try to describe it:

I was using my Slackware (fluxbox, firefox, thunderbird, jin) and was connected to the internet (ADSL usb modem Sagem fast 800).
Then, thunderbird seemed to hang (fading away). Knowing that the problem would occur, I shifted to a console and tried a "df -h" (no problem) and then "free -m".

bash: /usr/bin/free: Input/output error

I went back to thunderbird and tried to "run filters on folder" (I had mails): no effect but suddenly thunderbird disappeared.

As firefox was running, I tried to load a html page (Linuxquestions.org of course) and firefox disappeared.

I moved to jin (chessplaying java software) and closed it: I got the message "unable to save preferences to ~/.jin/user.prefs"

I decided to leave fluxbox after stopping the ADSL connection:

bash: /usr/local/bin/stopadsl: Input/output error

When I tried to leave normally fluxbox, I got a black screen (instead of the usual gdm) with the following messages:

Ext3-fs error (device ide(3,9)) in start_transaction: journal has aborted

As I wanted to reboot, I made a CTRL+ALT+SUP and got the following message:

unable to execute "/sbin/shutdown"

Then I switched off the computer and used Mandrake to write this message. Mandrake is working perfectly. I don't know why I get problems with my Slackware 10.1.

That's all for now, the patient is still ill and is waiting for some magical advice

Thanks for helping me again,

realnerd

well...i think that disk is not ok.
i don't know how large that partition is, but you might make it a little smaller,
by moving the startpoint.
you'll need to reinstall, and i don't know if that's a prob.

it's just what i would try with such a disk, i don't know any other way to find the cause...

egag

And now it may be the end: the available size of my /dev/hda9 partition decreased in a few minutes from 1013M to 361M, I don't know why, I tried to close all my running programmes...The Xserver was down and when I reboot my usual session manager gdm is totally unable to function. My system is down, I cannot do anything (example: if I make a ls I get the message "segmentation fault"). I am again using Mandrake.

de profundis clamavi ad te, Slackware.

If any of you have an idea, I would appreciate...

Thanks, Slackers!