Wrong BIOS IDE Settings on a SATA disk (AHCI)? Post: 302305419

Sponsored Content

Special Forums Hardware Filesystems, Disks and Memory Wrong BIOS IDE Settings on a SATA disk (AHCI)? Post 302305419 by septima.pars on Wednesday 8th of April 2009 11:06:30 PM

04-09-2009

Registered User

Wrong BIOS IDE Settings on a SATA disk (AHCI)?

Hello,

I wanted to share an experience I had today which was quite a learning experience and perhaps useful for others who may run into the issue at some point in the future.

Basically, the scenario involves a OS which was installed on a machine which hardware-wise, had a SATA Drive. The web server Apache for this machine had earlier crashed a website. The machine I could confirm from a remote location was still operational (i.e. responding to ping attempts)

Taking a monitor/keyboard to the location of the server and subsequently plugging in a monitor, I noticed the logs were flooded with messages to the like of:

backlog limit exceeded
backlog limit exceeded
backlog limit exceeded
backlog limit exceeded
backlog limit exceeded
... ... ...

(which maybe points to a hard drive which may be failing.)

Trying next to login, the machine was unresponsive therefore I rebooted.
Next, I was able to console in as root, and noticed that certain log messages were flooding my shell session. They were similiar to the following:

hda failure rewrite_ext
reset succesful
hda failure rewrite_ext
reset succesful
hda failure rewrite_ext
reset succesful
hda failure rewrite_ext
hda failure rewrite_ext
... ... ...

I then had to switch to another console via Ctrl+Alt+F2/F3 to attempt to restart or at least check the status of the Apache service httpd.

I then had more messages which were flooding even my logged in sessions which I had never seen before. (No prompt and no way to enter commands)

____________________

In anycase, I came to the conclusion after searching a bit on google, is that perhaps the backlogs were flooding the hard drive and causing a DoS, which then maybe caused Apache to stop running.

Also searching google, I noticed that certain BIOS settings may contribute to this behavior, as the machine had no IDE drives, only SATA drives yet somehow the settings were entered incorrectly or not changed to "Enhanced" with a particular setting. (AHCI?)

Some of my colleagues thought the hard drive suspect of failing. Just an interesting experience.................... : )

septima.pars

View Public Profile for septima.pars

Find all posts by septima.pars

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

Using newfs to make file system on a sata disk using Acard adaptor

Hi All: I am using an adaptor between a 1TB SATA hard drive and solaris 8 box with 68 pin scsi. I use the format utility to partition the HD which works fine but when I use newfs, I get some errors. I will place them below. I have blocked and the error message is in red. Anybody got any...

2. Filesystems, Disks and Memory

shift hard disk from primary IDE channel to secondary IDE channal

Wellcomes All, some times ago I 've installed a Debian ditribution on an Hard Disk who was set as Primary Master. Few days ago, I 've decided to install another Hard Disk with a different Operating System. When I did that, I turned off the old hard disk, and I mouted the new one on the Primary IDE...

3. SCO

SATA AHCI Tape on SCO 5.0.7

Dear all, I'm newbie in SCO. I already purchase SCO 5.0.7 and SATA Tape Drive (not SCSI) for IBM server. not a cheap investment :( my problem is: I can't use my sata tape on sco 5.0.7 for backup my data because sco can't detect any sata tape has been plug into o/s. i already running "mkdev...

4. SCO

SATA Hard Disk support by SCO OpenServer 5.05

Is SATA hard disk is suooprted by SCO OpenServer 5.05? If No, how to couter this problem. If yes, please provide the installation steps.

5. SCO

declare disk driver for IDE hard disk

hi I've a fresh installation of SCO 5.0.7 on the IDE hard disk. For SCSI hard disk I can declare, for example blc disk driver using: # mkdev hd 0 SCSI-0 0 blc 0but it works for IDE hard disk?

6. Solaris

Changed to AHCI, can not access disk???

Here is my problem: I have an 1.5TB disk with OpenSolaris (b134, b151a) using non AHCI. I then changed to AHCI in BIOS, which results in severe problems: I can not boot the system. I suspect the problem is because I changed to AHCI. Now I have changed back to non AHCI, but still I can not...

7. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

find physical disk type : SAS / SATA

Hi, Is there an easy way to find the disk-type from the command line or with another api ? sdparm works for SAS but not for SATA, hdparm works for SATA but not SAS. Thanks

8. Hardware

Sun fire 4270 reset BIOS settings after reboot

Hello, I am trying to perform Suse 10 SP3 installation via network in 6 Sun Fire 4270 M2 servers. The problem is that even if i set first prio boot device the hard disk the system always try to boot from network.And after the first restart the BIOS setting has been lost(and PXE come first...

9. Linux

Debian Grub 1.99 alters BIOS (confirmed after formatting hard disk)

Hi, I am a long time Windows user and recently try this Debian Wheezy OS. Burn Debian ISO in Windows environment and then select DVD ROM drive to boot first in BIOS. The first installation of Debian (GNOME) was with multi-boot option that allows booting from hard disk and DVD drive. I then...

10. Hardware

Hitachi SATA hard disk drive password locked

Hi everyone (see attachments) I bought an HP Elitebook 8460p on eBay and it came with a password-locked Hitachi hard drive which I was told is the original hard drive. I don't know the password for the drive and running the diagnostics tools I see the hard drive is healthy. I tried booting...

LEARN ABOUT NETBSD

viaide

VIAIDE(4)						   BSD Kernel Interfaces Manual 						 VIAIDE(4)

NAME

     viaide -- AMD, NVIDIA and VIA IDE disk controllers driver

SYNOPSIS

     viaide* at pci? dev ? function ? flags 0x0000
     options PCIIDE_AMD756_ENABLEDMA

DESCRIPTION

     The viaide driver supports the following IDE controllers and provides the interface with the hardware for the ata driver:
	   -   Advanced Micro Devices AMD-756, 766, 768 and CS5536 IDE Controllers
	   -   NVIDIA nForce, nForce2, nForce2 400, nForce3, nForce3 250, nForce4, MCP04, MCP55, MCP61, MCP65, MCP67 IDE and SATA Controllers.
	   -   VIA Technologies VT82C586, VT82C586A, VT82C596A, VT82C686A, VT8233A, VT8235, VT8237/VT8237R IDE Controllers, VT6421 Serial RAID
	       Controller and CX700 IDE Controller.

     The 0x0002 flag forces the viaide driver to disable DMA on chipsets for which DMA would normally be enabled.  This can be used as a debugging
     aid, or to work around problems where the IDE controller is wired up to the system incorrectly.

SEE ALSO

     ata(4), atapi(4), intro(4), pci(4), pciide(4), wd(4), wdc(4)

NOTES

     Drives on the VT6421 Serial RAID Controller can only be accessed after they have been configured into RAID or JBOD sets via its BIOS.  It is
     also inaptly named as it has both SATA and PATA interfaces.

BUGS

     The AMD756 chip revision D2 has a bug affecting DMA (but not Ultra-DMA) modes.  The workaround documented by AMD is to not use DMA on any
     drive which does not support Ultra-DMA modes.  This does not appear to be necessary on all drives, the PCIIDE_AMD756_ENABLEDMA option can be
     used to force multiword DMA on the buggy revisions.  Multiword DMA can eventually be disabled on a per-drive basis with config flags, see
     wd(4).  The bug, if triggered, will cause a total system hang.

     The timings used for the PIO and DMA modes for controllers listed above are for a PCI bus running at 30 or 33 MHz.  This driver may not work
     properly on overclocked systems.

BSD
								  August 31, 2007							       BSD

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

Using newfs to make file system on a sata disk using Acard adaptor

Discussion started by: mndavies

2. Filesystems, Disks and Memory

shift hard disk from primary IDE channel to secondary IDE channal

Discussion started by: thekarsillo

3. SCO

SATA AHCI Tape on SCO 5.0.7

Discussion started by: asumatezuka

4. SCO

SATA Hard Disk support by SCO OpenServer 5.05

Discussion started by: rakeshkumar9919