i386/136356: SATA / ICH7 problems

[Rene Schickbauer]

>Number:         136356
>Category:       i386
>Synopsis:       SATA / ICH7 problems
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       critical
>Priority:       high
>Responsible:    freebsd-i386
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Sun Jul 05 16:50:02 UTC 2009
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Rene Schickbauer
>Release:        8-current
>Organization:
>Environment:
FreeBSD titan 8.0-CURRENT-200906 FreeBSD 8.0-CURRENT-200906 #1: Tue Jun 30 13:29:40 CEST 2009     root at titan:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386
>Description:
Writing to a SATA disk on an ICH7M SATA 150 Controller brings the controller into an inaccessible/unstable state.

In my EEE PC 901, i haved changed the second SSD disk from the Asus delivered one to a Patriot 32GB SSD. Installing FreeBSD on this disk and working with it seems fine.

Accessing the build-in 4GB SSD by writing makes that controller inaccesible, sometimes even crashing the whole system. After rebooting, in some cases even the BIOS does not see the controller anymore - i have to remove AC cord and battery for a minute in Order to restore the system.

The hardware itself is working ok, hours of stresstesting under windows do not seem to trigger that problem, while even a simple newfs under FreeBSD can crash the computer.

>From what i have been able to see in the kernel (i'm not really good at kernel debugging...), there could be a problem that the ICH7 does not react properly to a reset command or the reset command itself is faulty. This seems to trigger on certain timeout conditions, when the slow SSD/Flashchips/Chipset sends a soft error because it is not quite able to keep up and need one or more commands resend.
>How-To-Repeat:
Get an EEE PC (or a Soekris Net5501 with a slow SATA disk - was able to reproduce the error there, too) and write to a SATA disk.
>Fix:


>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: