Re: How to Force PIO mode on sata promise (Linux 2.6.10)
From: Bill Davidsen
Date: Thu Sep 22 2005 - 11:37:50 EST
David Sanchez wrote:
Hi Chris,
It was a good idea but it doesn't resolve the problem...
I add my card into the dma_black_list of the libata to force DMA disabled and the problem seems to no more appear...maybe PIO is so slow that the data has no time to be corrupted...
But I can NOT affirm that the problem is the DMA.
I try the linux kernel 2.4,2.6.11, 2.6.12 and 2.6.13. More I try 2 different toolchains and the problem persists...
Another idea??
You disable DMA and the problem goes away, that seems to point to DMA as
the problem, and since others aren't having the same problem with the
DMA code in the kernel it certainly suggests the DMA hardware really is
the problem, or is causing it. It's remotely possible that the kernel
has a bug in the code just for your controller, although unlikely.
Have you run memtest86 on your memory? I have seen cases where memory
was marginal and using CPU and DMA was enough to cause it to fail, but
only when people had played with the memory timing in the BIOS. I
suspect the SATA disk has a higher datarate than anything else in your
system, so it could trigger some marginal cases in the memory system.
Unlikely, but possible.
ideas:
test your memory if you haven't
Check that your BIOS is up-to-date
check your BIOS memory timing settings
See if the controller came with tools to adjust DMA timing
try writing to a PATA drive while reading from the SATA
to generate high DMA rate, look for corruption there
try another controller of the same type
try another controler of another supported type
to see that it's not your drive
accept that your controller *belongs* on the blacklist
Since you asked for ideas, these are probably in order of easy to difficult.
--
-bill davidsen (davidsen@xxxxxxx)
"The secret to procrastination is to put things off until the
last possible moment - but no longer" -me
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