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SubjectRe: SCSI bug
sirdir wrote:
>
> Hi
> I encoutered a 'bug' in the SCSI subsystem of Linux. I have a harddrive
> that spins down now and then to do some sort of recalibration (silly
> thing, I know... but otherwise it's fast and big) .. And yes, if I say it
> spins down, I mean it.. Every other operating system can cope with
> this... even win 95 :) ... but linux goes nuts ... I had a discussion
> with deischen about it.. but perhaps I can find the error messages again...

I had this same problem with a certain Syquest drive. I checked the cabling,
termination, and everything. Finally I had to remove the drive from the SCSI
chain. I also got it to fail under MSDOS by writing a lot of files to it. If
it happens to spin down while DOS is writing, it will get corrupted, and
DOS will give an "Abort, Retry, Ignore" message.

The reason Linux has problems immediately is because it retains drive state
information in its caches. That's why it has a "sync" command like most
other Unixes. MSDOS isn't sophisticated enough to do this normally. Try
putting your Windows swapfile on that drive. Eventually you'll get a GPF
if it tries to swap a memory page while the drive is spun down. Another
thing to try is to use diskcaching, and enable lazy writes.

> ....

>
> anyways, i hope somebody can fix this problem... i love linux, but with
> this harddrive it's somewhat unusable...

The drive is unreliable anyway. It's not the fault of the OS. If you
get it repaired, let me know what they did to it. I need to have mine
fixed too. (Is it possible you have the drive in power-saver mode?)

BTW: SCSI drives are *not* supposed to spin down by themselves without
being instructed to do so by the OS. This would be catastrophic.

--
Andrew C. Esh mailto:andrew_esh@cnt.com
Computer Network Technology andrewes@mtn.org (finger for PGP key)
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