Re: 5.3-RELEASE: WARNING - WRITE_DMA interrupt timout - what does it mean?

Godwin Stewart wrote:
> On Tue, 9 Nov 2004 15:01:41 -0800, "Zoltan Frombach" <tssajo_at_hotmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
>>I just upgraded to 5.3-RELEASE a few days ago. This morning this line got 
>>into my system log file:
>>Nov  9 06:14:03 www kernel: ad0: WARNING - WRITE_DMA interrupt was seen
>>but timeout fired LBA=2491143
>>
>>I've never seen this message before. Can someone please explain what it 
>>means? With Thanks,
> 
> Looks like you may have a hard disk about to die. I'd start doing backups if
> I were you and then consider replacing the HD.
> 

I can easily reproduce this warning message with 'pkg-config xxx',
xxx is anything can not be found in 'pkg-config --list-all'.
My system has nearly no response (console, network, etc.) after that.

 From that I find 'gnome-config' is symbolic-linked to 'pkg-config'
on my system(!). When 'pkg-config' can't find anything about 'xxx',
it calls 'gnome-config', and 'gnome-config'('pkg-config') calls
'gnome-config'('pkg-config') calls...:)

<screenshot>
65751  v1  S+     0:00.01 pkg-config xxx
65752  v1  S+     0:00.01 sh -c gnome-config --libs xxx > /dev/null 2>&1
65753  v1  S+     0:00.01 gnome-config --libs xxx (pkg-config)
65754  v1  S+     0:00.01 sh -c gnome-config --libs xxx > /dev/null 2>&1
65755  v1  S+     0:00.01 gnome-config --libs xxx (pkg-config)
65756  v1  S+     0:00.01 sh -c gnome-config --libs xxx > /dev/null 2>&1
65757  v1  S+     0:00.01 gnome-config --libs xxx (pkg-config)
65758  v1  S+     0:00.01 sh -c gnome-config --libs xxx > /dev/null 2>&1
65759  v1  S+     0:00.01 gnome-config --libs xxx (pkg-config)
...
</screenshot>