What are these ATA exceptions trying to tell me? [2.6.26] SystemEvents]

[martin f krafft]

Dear folks,

I have a quality and high performance, new rack-mounted system, but
every now and then, the kernel spews a slew of messages like the
following to syslog:

  ata3: EH in SWNCQ mode,QC:qc_active 0x7FFF sactive 0x7FFF
  ata3: SWNCQ:qc_active 0x1 defer_bits 0x7FFE last_issue_tag 0x0
  dhfis 0x1 dmafis 0x0 sdbfis 0x0
  ata3: ATA_REG 0x40 ERR_REG 0x0
  ata3: tag : dhfis dmafis sdbfis sacitve
  ata3: tag 0x0: 1 0 0 1
  ata3.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x7fff SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
  ata3.00: cmd 61/18:00:4f:22:b3/00:00:05:00:00/40 tag 0 ncq 12288 out
          res 40/00:01:01:4f:c2/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
  ata3.00: status: { DRDY }
  [...]
  ata3: hard resetting link
  ata3: SRST failed (errno=-19)
  ata3: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
  ata3: failed to recover some devices, retrying in 5 secs
  ata3: hard resetting link
  ata3: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=-19)
  ata3: SRST failed (errno=-16)
  ata3: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)
  ata3.00: configured for UDMA/133
  ata3: exception Emask 0x10 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x9 t4
  ata3: hot plug
  ata3.00: configured for UDMA/133
  sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] 1953525168 512-byte hardware sectors (1000205 MB)
  sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
  sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
  sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
  sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] 1953525168 512-byte hardware sectors (1000205 MB)
  sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Write Protect is off
  sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
  sd 2:0:0:0: [sdc] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA

This happens for ata[34], but never for ata[12].

At the time of these messages, the the machine was not loaded. In
particular, there was no SMART self-test running. I mention this
because i have set smartd to short tests daily and extended tests
weekly, and those only rarely complete:

  # 1  Extended offline    Interrupted (host reset)      00%      4812         -
  # 2  Short offline       Interrupted (host reset)      00%      4684         -

while they run fine for ata[12].

The chipset is nVidia MCP55. Am I dealing with a broken controller?

Cheers,

-- 
martin | http://madduck.net/ | http://two.sentenc.es/
 
"i like young girls. their stories are shorter."
                                                        -- tom mcguane
 
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