Re: Problem with deleting files

Gregory Nou wrote:
> I'm currently experiencing a weird problem : some of my folders are
> completely empty (ls -a doesn't even mention . or ..)
> But, I cannot remove them, and a ls is very very slow (but just in those
> folders, and it is quite rare, but now I cannot update firefox, nor
> openoffice, because make clean will fail).

Yeah, I've seen this.  For me, this is the direct result of the ServerWorks
chipset on the box not properly doing DMA, and in fact causes corruption on
the bus when DMA is enabled for the IDE controller.   Usually you see this
when doing large extracts or deletes (like the openoffice of
mozilla/firefox ports).  You need to fsck, hopefully before you even read
this (you'll see lots of softupdate problems being fixed).

You'll also notice that your daily automatic reports sent to root will
mention problems with traversing files or directories.

For reference this bad boy:

atapci0: <ServerWorks ROSB4 UDMA33 controller> port
0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6,0x170-0x177,0x376,0xfc90-0xfc9f at device 15.1 on pci0

atapci0_at_pci0:15:1:      class=0x01018a card=0x00000000 chip=0x02111166
rev=0x00
hdr=0x00
    vendor   = 'ServerWorks (Was: Reliance Computer Corp)'
    device   = 'OSB4 PCI EIDE Controller'
    class    = mass storage
    subclass = ATA

The only solution is to run with dma off (see atacontrol, or shut it off in
BIOS). 

-- 
othermark
atkin901 at nospam dot yahoo dot com
(!wired)?(coffee++):(wired);