RE: ATA driver races with interrupts

I wrote:

> I have two 250GB SATA discs, one Western Digital and one Maxtor.
> After looking at the logs from today, and grep'ing some old logs,
> I noticed that it seems more common for the channel with the WD
> disc to lock up. My logs don't go back far enough that I can say
> it has always been like that, but it looks that way from the logs
> right now [...]

It was purely coincidental. Today the channel with the Maxtor disc locked
up. I also know I've seen lockups on both channels. Plus I've switched SATA
cables at least once.

> I have updated my system to sources from 2004.08.09.13.00.00 
> without any patches (because I saw some commits to the ATA code
> in the last couple of days). The base code now allows me to at
> least start the SMART monitor and run some stress tests. I'll
> report back when/if it fails.

Unfortunately it didn't take too long for it to lock up. After 42 hours of
uptime with very light I/O load on the SATA discs (plus the SMART monitor),
one of the channels locked up. No interesting messages in the logs, just the
normal "removed from configuration" message I've reported before.

Any suggestions on how to proceed?

/Daniel Eriksson