Hello all,
I have recently upgraded my RAID 5 Array from a 3-drive configuration to a 4 drive configuration, with 4x500GB SATA Samsung hard drives.
/home is mounted on the RAID, with the remainder of the system mounted on a 200GB Western digital PATA hard drive
Since doing it, I am getting intermittent freezes of the entire system. By freezes, I mean that the application (typically amarok, because it's a media centre pc/file server) has locked up, no applets in gnome respond, the mouse or keyboard does not respond, and I cannot ssh into the machine. From this, I am suspecting that it's either hardware or kernel.
Before this, I was on constant uptime since compiling and installing a new kernel, and never had any problems with kernels before that. Now, I am getting hours of uptime at best (with the new hdd, same kernel), when /home (such as the music collection) is being accessed.
The problem is almost identical to that seen in these posts:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ht=sata+freeze
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ht=sata+freeze
And similar-ish issues here:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ht=sata+freeze (don't use LUKS though)
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ht=sata+freeze
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ht=sata+freeze
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ht=sata+freeze
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ht=sata+freeze
Oh, I should mention my hardware and OS
O.S. Fedora 7
[damien@localhost ~]$ uname -r
2.6.23.1
[damien@localhost ~]$ uname -m
x86_64
Motherboard = Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4 (nForce 570 SLI Chipset)
CPU = AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+
RAM = 1GB DDR2-800 (Can't remember if it's Geil or Corsair)
Now, the reason I am suspecting it's the SATA driver and/or hardware is that on this exact same motherboard (actually, I have two instances of the same motherboard and they both exhibited this behaviour), I was running Windows XP, and with the "nvidia enhanced" drivers, I was getting the BSOD. Using the standard MS drivers, they're much more stable. I remember doing all the memtest stuff back then with no problems on either mobo.
Until now, using Linux, I have not had a problem, but I am now using a new SATA port (which is my only HW configuration change), and my previous problems, and noting that some people also seem to be having problems with the same chipset, leads me to suspect that this may be the issue. Unfortunately. I can't remember if the issues I had then was due to the **exact same** sata port, but seem to remember shifting around the sata ports on the motherboard - it was 12 months ago, after all!
I am running a Seasonic S12+ 400W power supply, so I suspect it isn't a power supply overload issue.
Can anyone suggest the way forward? For example:
- Any logs/configuration files?
- Tests that I should do to try and reporduce it, and if so, what information should I capture?
- Should I recompile another old kernel (someone found that 2.6.17 was stable with the sata_nv, but were having problems with 2.6.20 or 2.6.21)
I'm less keen on doing HW tests, becasue it's a pain to open the case
, but if it comes to that, I'll do it.
Thank you very much
Damien.
