FAILURE - SETFEATURES SET TRANSFER MODE status=41

[Alex Zbyslaw]

Jimmy Bäckström wrote:

>
>
> Alex Zbyslaw wrote:
>
>> Jimmy Bäckström wrote:
>>
>>> Hi list!
>>> I've googled and searched the mailing list archives for this but 
>>> couldn't find anything useful.
>>> I just installed freebsd 5.4 on a dell PE 2850 with RAID5 (PERC). 
>>> The installation goes fine and as far as I can tell it runs ok, 
>>> haven't really done anything with yet though so I can be wrong, but 
>>> when booting I get two messages that concerns me:
>>>
>>> ata2-master: FAILURE - SETFEATURES SET TRANSFER MODE 
>>> status=41<READY,ERROR> error=4<ABORTED>
>>> ata2-slave: FAILURE - SETFEATURES SET TRANSFER MODE 
>>> status=41<READY,ERROR> error=4<ABORTED>
>>>
>>> and
>>>
>>> Interrupt storm detected on "irq18: uhci2"; throttling interrupt source
>>>
>>> When it comes to the ata2-master/slave errors I understand that they 
>>> happen for quite a few people running later versions of freebsd? I 
>>> haven't found anything on the net that points directly at my 
>>> hardware specifics, it seems to happen to a lot of different drives. 
>>> I'm using 4 seagate harddrives by the way.
>>>
>>> If this problem has been adressed on the list before, I apologise, I 
>>> couldn't find anything about it. I appreciate any pointers and if 
>>> someone wants me to post dmesg just ask.
>>>
>> Set up two of these servers recently.
>>
>> We totally ignored the interrupt storm.  We couldn't make it go away 
>> but it seemed to do no harm.
>>
>> The ata errors are froeither related to the DRAC virtual devices, or 
>> the real CD, if you have one.  They seem to confuse atapicam.  If you 
>> take atapicam out of the kernel the messages will go away.  Your hard 
>> drives are SCSI and have nothing to do with ata.
>>
> Doh!
> Didn't even think about the drives being SCSI. My bad. :)
> About atapicam, I can't find it in the kernel config, what line should 
> I be looking for?
>
My bad.  That's what I tried to get rid of the error and it turns out, 
on closer inspection, that it didn't work :-(  Should have checked my 
facts more closely!

However, I am convinced that the error is not important.  It is 
certainly not related to your disks (which is what you really care 
about, right?).

My supposition is that it is either to do with the DRAC (do you have 
one?) or to the chipset used to drive the ATAPI devices.  If I look at 
the boot log:

acd0: CDRW <HL-DT-STCD-RW/DVD-ROM GCC-4244N/B101> at ata0-master PIO4
ata2-master: FAILURE - SETFEATURES SET TRANSFER MODE 
status=41<READY,ERROR> error=4<ABORTED>
ata2-slave: FAILURE - SETFEATURES SET TRANSFER MODE 
status=41<READY,ERROR> error=4<ABORTED>
acd1: CDROM <VIRTUALCDROM DRIVE/> at ata2-slave BIOSPIO

acd1 is the "virtual cd" provided by the DRAC and is ata2-slave.  My 
best guess is that the virtual floppy, also provided by the DRAC, is 
ata2-master.  Since these devices are virtual, I guess that is causing 
the ata code to barf somehow.  However, at least the virtual CD works 
just fine, and I installed FreeBSD on one of the machines, from a CD 
that was actually loaded into a Windows host on the same network, and as 
far as the install process was concerned the CD was local to the Dell.  
It was slow, but it was so neat.  The machine could, in theory, have 
been half a globe away and I wouldn't have needed anyone to load a CD 
for me!

You could try taking out atapifd and see if that makes the error go 
away.  But that might stop the virtual floppy from working.  (The real 
floppy should still work as it's not an atapi device).

Summary
-----------

Despite the errors, all the important devices work just fine (keyboards, 
disks, CD, virtual CD, DRAC).  I only see the interrupt storm at boot 
time, and although I don't like it, I'm prepared to ignore it as long as 
everything keeps working.

--Alex

PS If you have the PERC 4e controller, then you can get an interface to 
it from FreeBSD.  See the sysutils/megarc port.