Erik Jakobsen
Humm, I am suspecting a drive problem or might it be the DMA SuSE script. Are you enabling that script? I do not use 7.3, but I do use this on SLES, which is based on 7.2.
Ok. No I do not enable that script. Not AFAIK. How can I see that ?.
DMA is enabled automatically by the default SuSE kernel in 7.3. The "backup" kernel (vmlinuz.suse) doesn't use DMA so you may try this one instead. It can be selected by LILO and checked by hdparm: # /sbin/hdparm -v /dev/hda /dev/hda: multcount = 16 (on) I/O support = 0 (default 16-bit) unmaskirq = 0 (off) using_dma = 1 (on) keepsettings = 0 (off) nowerr = 0 (off) readonly = 0 (off) readahead = 8 (on) geometry = 2491/255/63, sectors = 40031712, start = 0 The variable START_IDEDMA="yes" is in /etc/rc.config in SuSE 7.2 but not in 7.3, so may forget about it.
If not, I would suspect the drive. I have one right now that is not dead, but takes forever seeking over some sectors, you may have a similar problem.
I have the same problem. Its a new Seagate 40GB.
IBM provides a utility called Drive Fitness Test (DFT) which checks its disks for HW errors. It's quite good if you want to make sure the disk is really bad. I wonder if there is a similar utility for Seagate disks. (I haven't searched for it.) -- Alexandr.Malusek@imv.liu.se