[vox-tech] not sure what to call it

[Samuel Merritt]

--5mCyUwZo2JvN/JJP
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

On Sat, Apr 13, 2002 at 01:49:04PM -0400, Patrick Stockton wrote:
> Oh now this is an interesting idea, and HDB does happen to be a Maxtor dr=
ive
> on the older side.  For as long as I've had this box HDB has been used as
> the linux partition used in a dual boot situation.  Now that i've got the
> laptop I put the system on HDA and on HDB I've got one large partition th=
at
> is mounted as /home
>=20
> I just ran a quick fdisk on hdb to see what it says and it gave me an
> interesting read out:
>=20
> Disk /dev/hdb: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 875 cylinders
> Units =3D cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes
>=20
>    Device Boot    Start       End    Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/hdb1   *         1       876   7034296+  83  Linux
> Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary:
>      phys=3D(875, 186, 63) should be (875, 254, 63)
>=20
> I'm wondering what that exactly means...
>=20
> I looked for the /etc/sysconfig/harddisks but didn't find it.  Any other
> places I should look for DMA settings?  Possibly a jumper on the back?

They might have changed it in Mandrake 8.2; I'm running Mandrake 8.1.=20

Look at hdparm. If you put
/sbin/hdparm -d0 /dev/hdb
in a startup script, that will shut off DMA (-d0) on that drive.=20

That could explain the login failures - your shell tries to read its=20
=2E[shell]rc file in your home directory, and hangs.=20

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Samuel Merritt" <snmerritt@ucdavis.edu>
> To: <vox-tech@lists.lugod.org>
> Sent: Saturday, April 13, 2002 12:59 PM
> Subject: Re: [vox-tech] not sure what to call it
>=20
> I had a similar problem once; it turned out to be my cheap Maxtor hard
> drive that claimed to support DMA, but would hang every now and then.
> The symptoms were that the system seemed to be running okay, but any
> process that needed to use the disk for any reason (including being
> swapped in) would hang. CTRL+ALT+DEL wouldn't work because it would try to
> load /sbin/shutdown from disk, and hang. Also, the disk activity LED on
> the front of my case was on solid when this happened.
>=20
> If the symptoms persist, try disabling DMA on your hard disk(s) and see if
> the crashes end. Mandrake uses /etc/sysconfig/harddisks for IDE disk
> parameters.
>=20
>=20
>=20
>=20
> _______________________________________________
> vox-tech mailing list
> vox-tech@lists.lugod.org
> http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech

--=20
Samuel Merritt
PGP key is at http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~merritt/snmerritt.asc
Information about PGP can be found at http://www.mindspring.com/~aegreene/p=
gp/

--5mCyUwZo2JvN/JJP
Content-Type: application/pgp-signature
Content-Disposition: inline

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

iD8DBQE8uHdFa6Tf6HA+Z6IRAuS0AJ4vq+/H0+wB1sZTizTenIuPbLIokACff1c8
sq7ExZ0cmaXbhKoG6y8e7Og=
=u3xg
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

--5mCyUwZo2JvN/JJP--