Re: TIMEOUT/FAILURE_WRITE_DMA on ServerWorks HT1000 SATA150

From: Josh Paetzel <josh_at_tcbug.org>
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2008 10:58:49 +0000
On Tuesday 04 March 2008 09:10:03 am Oliver Schonrock wrote:
> We have a Dell SC1435 with the above SATA controller which was running
> FreeBSD6.2 fine for about 3 months.
>
> We re-built it with FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE from scratch (ie complete new
> install from CD). Installation failed while copying base system from CD
> to disk.
>
> Suspecting a possible hardware issue we rebuilt it again with FreeBSD
> 6.3. It built and ran fine, thereby eliminating any hardware problems.
>
> Repeated attempts of installing FBSD7.0-RELEASE continued to fail at
> slightly different points, but always when writing to disk. Virtual
> Console 2 showed the following errors:
>
> NMI ISA 20 EISA
> ad4: TIMEOUT WRITE_DMA
> aNMI ISA 20, EISA
> FAILURE - WRITE_DMA. retrying
>
> I suspect this is related to other (S)ATA related problems which have
> been reported on this list, eg:
>
> <http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=1489302+0+archive/2008/freebs
>d-current/20080120.freebsd-current>
>
>
> I would be happy to provide more information to help debug this problem,
> however it is slightly difficult as I cannot even get the system
> installed under 7.0.
>
> Any suggestions on how to get better info. I could also look into
> providing remote access to the machine.
>
> Thanks
>
> Oliver Schonrock

There are known issues with the HT1000, consider yourself lucky it works with 
6.2-R, for a lot of people it doesn't even work there.  Last I heard someone 
had gotten problematic HT1000 hardware in to sos_at_'s hands and he was going to 
find a fix, however I stopped paying attention when I started migrating off 
the hardware.  There are tons of mailing list posts from myself and others if 
you want the full scoop, as well as at least one open PR.

-- 
Thanks,

Josh Paetzel

PGP: 8A48 EF36 5E9F 4EDA 5A8C 11B4 26F9 01F1 27AF AECB

Received on Tue Mar 04 2008 - 15:59:03 UTC

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