I am very concerned about thr following hard disk errors recorded in the RedHat 9 log watch file:

There is also a promise Ultra100 Tx2 card.
The partitions where formatted with Partition Commander.

--------------------- Kernel Begin ------------------------

WARNING: Kernel Errors Present
hda: task_no_data_intr: error=0x04 { DriveStat...: 5Time(s)
hda: task_no_data_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }...:
5Time(s)
hdb: task_no_data_intr: error=0x04 { DriveStat...: 5Time(s)
hdb: task_no_data_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }...:
5Time(s)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My Kernel is: Linux version 2.4.20-20.9 (bhcompile@stripples.devel.redhat.com) (gcc version 3.2.2 20030222 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.2-5)) #1 Mon Aug 18 11:45:58 EDT 2003

Following from boot:

PIIX4: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:07.1
PIIX4: chipset revision 1
PIIX4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xf000-0xf007, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbMA
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xf008-0xf00f, BIOS settings: hdcMA, hddio
PDC20268: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:0f.0
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:0f.0
PDC20268: chipset revision 1
PDC20268: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide2: BM-DMA at 0xc400-0xc407, BIOS settings: hdeio, hdfio
ide3: BM-DMA at 0xc408-0xc40f, BIOS settings: hdgio, hdhio
hda: SAMSUNG SV1296A, ATA DISK drive
hdb: SAMSUNG SV1296A, ATA DISK drive
blk: queue c03cdfe0, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
blk: queue c03ce124, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
hdc: Hewlett-Packard CD-Writer Plus 8200a, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hde: WDC WD400AB-00BVA0, ATA DISK drive
hdf: Maxtor 6Y080L0, ATA DISK drive
blk: queue c03ce8a8, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
blk: queue c03ce9ec, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
hdh: IOMEGA ZIP 250 ATAPI, ATAPI FLOPPY drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
ide2 at 0xb400-0xb407,0xb802 on irq 11
ide3 at 0xbc00-0xbc07,0xc002 on irq 11
hda: attached ide-disk driver.
hda: task_no_data_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hda: task_no_data_intr: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }
hda: 25238304 sectors (12922 MB) w/482KiB Cache, CHS=1571/255/63, UDMA(33)
hdb: attached ide-disk driver.
hdb: task_no_data_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdb: task_no_data_intr: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }
hdb: 25238304 sectors (12922 MB) w/482KiB Cache, CHS=1669/240/63, UDMA(33)
hde: attached ide-disk driver.
hde: host protected area => 1
hde: 78165360 sectors (40021 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=77545/16/63, UDMA(100)
hdf: attached ide-disk driver.
hdf: host protected area => 1
hdf: 160086528 sectors (81964 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=158816/16/63, UDMA(100)
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
hdh: attached ide-floppy driver.
hdh: No disk in drive
hdh: 0kB, 0/64/32 CHS, 4096 kBps, 512 sector size, 2941 rpm
Partition check:
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 < hda5 hda6 hda7 >
hdb: hdb1 < hdb5 > hdb2
hde: [PTBL] [4865/255/63] hde1 hde2 < hde5 hde6 hde7 hde8 hde9 > hde3 hde4
hdf: [PTBL] [9964/255/63] hdf1 < hdf5 >
ide-floppy driver 0.99.newide
md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.

Hope the above helps.
Thanks
____

I have a Maxtor ATA 100 card which uses the Promise 20267 chipset which uses the same IDE driver that your chipset uses. The hardware is very buggy. Maxtor denies that the hardware is buggy because the combination of Maxtor hardware and Windows driver works (albeit slower than the specifications would seem to allow). The Linux kernel developers have been programming workarounds for Promise 2026x bugs for several kernel releases with mixed success. I intend to soon compile the 2.4.22 kernel and see if it got any better.

In the meantime I live with a lot of I/O errors, especially when I do massive I/O to two or three disks in parallel. The Maxtor cards are simply second rate quality.

Very interesting !!

Please let us know if the new Kernal makes any improvement.

Thanks for the reply.

"Please let us know if the new Kernal makes any improvement."

I have been running kernel 2.4.22 for a week now. I can run the Promise 20267 using only one attached cable OK. If I attach two disks, each on its own cable the Promise 20267 blows up whenever I happen to run a heavy I/O load against both disks at once.

Promise 20267 works no better on kernel 2.4.22 than it did on kernel 2.4.20.



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