Re: Some sata_mv error messages

From: Jeff Garzik
Date: Mon Mar 20 2006 - 21:33:41 EST


Dave Jones wrote:
On Mon, Mar 20, 2006 at 08:02:06PM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Sander wrote:
> >Hi all,
> >
> >While sata_mv in 2.6.16-rc6-mm2 seems stable (yah!) compared to
> >2.6.16-rc6 (no crashes, no data corruption), I still get these messages:
> >
> >[ 3962.139906] ata5: translated ATA stat/err 0xd0/00 to SCSI SK/ASC/ASCQ > >0xb/47/00
> >[ 3962.139959] ata5: status=0xd0 { Busy }
> >
> >[ 6105.948045] ata6: translated ATA stat/err 0xd0/00 to SCSI SK/ASC/ASCQ > >0xb/47/00
> >[ 6105.948097] ata6: status=0xd0 { Busy }
> >
> >[ 7981.164936] ata5: translated ATA stat/err 0xd0/00 to SCSI SK/ASC/ASCQ > >0xb/47/00
> >[ 7981.164991] ata5: status=0xd0 { Busy }
> >
> >[ 8273.951019] ata7: translated ATA stat/err 0xd0/00 to SCSI SK/ASC/ASCQ > >0xb/47/00
> >[ 8273.951072] ata7: status=0xd0 { Busy }
> >
> >[ 9903.032350] ata8: translated ATA stat/err 0xd0/00 to SCSI SK/ASC/ASCQ > >0xb/47/00
> >[ 9903.032402] ata8: status=0xd0 { Busy }
> >
> >
> >I'm not entirely sure this is only happens on sata_mv (Marvell
> >MV88SX6081) as out of eight disks only one is connected to the onboard
> >sata_nv (nVidia) and the error doesn't happen very often. But I'll keep
> >an eye on it.
> >
> >Are these messages somehow dangerous or otherwise indicating a
> >potentional serious problem? A google search came up with a few links,
> >but none of them helped me understand the messages.
> > Without answering your specific question, just remember that sata_mv is > considerly "highly experimental" right now, and still needs some > workarounds for hardware errata.
> > For now, the goal is a system that doesn't crash and doesn't corrupt > data. If its occasionally slow or spits out a few errors, but otherwise > still works, that's pretty darned good :)

Reminds me, this message (though different error codes) gets spewed to the
console a lot when haldaemon polls SATA CD drives.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=183348

Yeah, libata is way too noisy on ATAPI. In ATA, errors were rare so you needed all the info. In ATAPI, some "errors" are expected, and simply reported back to the application. Unfortunately, the solution is observation and iteration:

Console spews messages. Users yell, and paste said messages. Observe ATAPI behavior and return codes, and adjust libata. Repeat.

As an aside, most recent SATA cd/dvd drives support "asynchronous notification", which means you don't have the poll the drive. HAL needs to support that.


This wasn't occasional, this was every few seconds, making the box
pretty much unusable.

The entire box or just the console?

Jeff



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