TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA errors in security output

[Subhro]

Goofy drive data cables?

Regards
S.

On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 09:13:01 -0400, Louis LeBlanc
<freebsd at keyslapper.org> wrote:
> Hey all.  I'm seeing some things I'm not comfortable with in the
> security output from one of my systems - a new Dell Dimension 8300.
> 
> This is what I'm seeing:
> 
> key2.keyslapper.org kernel log messages:
> > ad4: TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA retrying (2 retries left) LBA=31672255
> > ad4: TIMEOUT - WRITE_DMA retrying (2 retries left) LBA=31672383
> 
> The ad4 timeouts have happened before.  They usually coincide with a
> moderate to large port build.  If I'm building some huge package like
> OpenOffice or xorg when this happens, the whole system hangs.  No
> mouse, keyboard, nothing.  Last time I just left it to see if things
> resolved, and next morning I found it freshly rebooted.  (I did
> eventually get both OpenOffice and xorg built though)
> 
> Ad4 is a 160G hard drive with the following partitioning:
> $ df -k
> Filesystem  1K-blocks    Used    Avail Capacity  Mounted on
> /dev/ad4s1a   1012974   57462   874476     6%    /
> devfs               1       1        0   100%    /dev
> /dev/ad4s1h  57896520       4 53264796     0%    /export
> /dev/ad4s1g  60931274 2371112 53685662     4%    /home
> /dev/ad4s1e   1012974    7882   924056     1%    /tmp
> /dev/ad4s1f  20308398 4000050 14683678    21%    /usr
> /dev/ad4s1d   8122126   85068  7387288     1%    /var
> 
> fdisk output is:
> # fdisk
> ******* Working on device /dev/ad4 *******
> parameters extracted from in-core disklabel are:
> cylinders=310019 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl)
> 
> Figures below won't work with BIOS for partitions not in cyl 1
> parameters to be used for BIOS calculations are:
> cylinders=310019 heads=16 sectors/track=63 (1008 blks/cyl)
> 
> Media sector size is 512
> Warning: BIOS sector numbering starts with sector 1
> Information from DOS bootblock is:
> The data for partition 1 is:
> sysid 165 (0xa5),(FreeBSD/NetBSD/386BSD)
>    start 63, size 312496317 (152586 Meg), flag 80 (active)
>        beg: cyl 0/ head 1/ sector 1;
>        end: cyl 1023/ head 254/ sector 63
> The data for partition 2 is:
> <UNUSED>
> The data for partition 3 is:
> <UNUSED>
> The data for partition 4 is:
> <UNUSED>
> 
> Any other info that would help, please let me know, but I'd like to
> know what the cause could be and how to fix it.
> 
> TIA
> Lou
> --
> Louis LeBlanc               FreeBSD at keyslapper.org
> Fully Funded Hobbyist, KeySlapper Extrordinaire :)
> http://www.keyslapper.org                     Ô¿Ô¬
> 
> Pudder's Law:
>  Anything that begins well will end badly.
>  (Note: The converse of Pudder's law is not true.)
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-- 
Subhro Sankha Kar
School of Information Technology
Block AQ-13/1 Sector V
ZIP 700091
India