Unexplained I/O errors

[Steven Timm]

> We had similar problems with UDMA and the 2.4.X kernels
> on this particular type of MB. You could try setting
> /sbin/hdparm -c1 -d1 -X32 /dev/hda

This command immediately took the disk offline and hung the machine.

>
> You can also try running a kernel without any UDMA
> support compiled in.
>
> A third option is to compile the kernel without initial
> UDMA support.

Do either of these two options apply to 2.2.19 kernels instead
of 2.4 kernels?

Steve



>
> A fourth possibility is that one of your hardware components is
> really broken ;-)
>
> Good luck,
> Matthijs
> ____________________________
> Dr ir Matthijs van Leeuwen
> HPC Specialist
> Compusys Plc, 58 Edison Road
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>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steven Timm [mailto:timm at fnal.gov]
> Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2001 4:19 PM
> To: beowulf at beowulf.org
> Subject: Unexplained I/O errors
>
>
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> We are currently burning in a new cluster and seeing the following
> problem:
>
> We see a number of files, usually contiguous in the same directory,
> that ls will list as being there, but ls -l will show Input/output error.
> An fsck of the system gets rid of the I/O errors but also gets
> rid of the file.  There is no error message on the console, nor
> in /var/log/messages, to indicate any disk controller problems.
>
> The problem appears to get worse over time, over a period of a few
> days the majority of our 136 machines exhibit these errors.
>
> Our configuration:  Supermicro 370DLE motherboard, 2x1000MHz pentium III,
> 512 MB ram, Seagate system disk (30 GB)  and CDROM on IDE primary,
> 2x40GB IBM drives on IDE secondary.
> hda: ST330620A, ATA DISK drive
> hdb: CD-ROM 48X/AKH, ATAPI CDROM drive
> hdc: IC35L040AVER07-0, ATA DISK drive
> hdd: IC35L040AVER07-0, ATA DISK drive
>
> I/O errors happen only on the system disk.
>
> We swapped out a large number of IDE cables for the system disk,
> replacing them with a better grade, with no luck.
>
> We have downgraded a few machines to the 2.2.16 kernel, and this
> appears to be OK, but it is a bit early to tell.
>
> We have also pulled the CD roms off of a few machines and this
> also appears to be stable but we need more data yet.
>
> Any idea what could be causing all of this?
>
> Steve
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> Steven C. Timm (630) 840-8525  timm at fnal.gov  http://home.fnal.gov/~timm/
> Fermilab Computing Division/Operating Systems Support
> Scientific Computing Support Group--Computing Farms Operations
>
>
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