[ltp] Re: hard disk spindown related lockups

[Shannon McMackin]

I've seen behavior similar to this on my T41 running RHEL4 with a custom 
2.6.10 kernel.  Also, no corruption after.  The system is totally 
unusable at this point and only a hard, cold boot brings it back.  I may 
have also seen this in FC3 with a 2.6.10 kernel.  Think I was on 
adapter, but know that it's happened once on battery.



sltp@rhythm.cx wrote:
> Hi Everyone. I've been having some issues with the hard disk on my T40p
> seeming to lock up while in linux. What happens is occasionally (sometimes
> every 2-3 hours) while running on battery the system will need to read
> something from the hard disk, but the read and all subsequent disk I/O will
> hang. Once this hang has begun, the hard disk activity light is lit solid.
> The system is still slightly usable, however any process that needs to read
> from disk will hang.
> 
> One time I managed to get a dmesg to run with the system in this state and I
> noticed some general read failure IDE/ATAPI error messages from the kernel.
> I didn't get the exact error messages stored anywhere but I can try if it
> would help.
> 
> General summary:
> 
> - happens both with the SuSE 2.6.5 kernel and a stock 2.6.10 I built myself.
> 
> - happens only in Linux, never in XP
> 
> - happens only while the system is on battery, never while on AC
> 
> - the hard disk light is always lit solid once the lockup starts
> 
> - lockups are occasional (once or twice per charge) and not reproducable by
> any specific action.
> 
> - I have never had any filesystem corruption, however if I write to a file a
> few seconds before this lockup occurrs, that data will not be there after I
> reboot.
> 
> - I have observed no evidence of failing hardware.
> 
> - It is possible that the lockups are always ocurring when the hard disk is
> spinning back up. The lockups usually seem to happen after the system has
> been quiet enough to allow the drive to spin down. But again, it doesn't
> happen on every single spinup.
> 
> 
> Anyone know what's going on? 
> Thanks