immenent disk failure ?

[Bill Vermillion]

On or about Fri, Apr 15, 2005 at 12:01 , while attempting a 
Zarathustra emulation freebsd-hackers-request at freebsd.org thus spake:



> Message: 4
> Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2005 10:58:02 -0500 (CDT)
> From: "H. S." <security at revolutionsp.com>
> Subject: imminent disk failure ?

...

> I have a server running 4.X for almost two years now, without
> problems - rock solid as it should be - yesterday the server
> became unresponsive, now that I have access again, and while
> checking the logs, I found this as the last message before the
> unresponsiveness:

> /kernel: ad0: READ command timeout tag=0 serv=0 - resetting

> The next message is the system getting back on, 1hour later.

> I have not changed anything kernel-related on this system for
> a long time (jul 2004), just apply the occasional kernel patch
> and rebuild/reboot the system. I never encountered this problem
> before. Could this message mean this disk is giving its last
> breaths ?

It might help if we knew a bit more about the system such
a drive make and model - you can see that in dmesg.  That may
point out some device that is known to be problematic.

The last time I got timeout errors like that was in the 3.x era
with a SCSI controller.   Last IDE problem I had was a bad read
that force the system into PIO mode with over 75% performance
decrease.   The only way around that one that I was aware of was a
reboot.

Bill

-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com