The Monday 2004-04-12 at 20:48 +0200, Robert Rozman wrote:
I get this messages reagarding my hard disk at boot:
<4>hda: dma_timer_expiry: dma status == 0x61 <3>hda: timeout waiting for DMA <3>hda: timeout waiting for DMA <4>hda: (__ide_dma_test_irq) called while not waiting <4>hda: status error: status=0x58 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest } <4> <3>hda: drive not ready for command
I'd kindly aks if anyone can explain me some more about those messages. Is this serious message or can be ignored ?
Not being a kernel developer, I read it as follows: The kernel makes a read request from the drive, expecting to receive the data by Direct Memory Access (DMA), within a certain time limit (during the waiting period, being a multitask system, it continues doing other things). After a certain time without response from the hda drive, it gives up. Then, after having giving up, it receives a signal form the drive that the transfer is ready... too late! But the read request has failed already, that unrecoverable (as DMA transfer). Probably the kernel disables DMA at that point and reads from the drive using PIO mode (I think). The end result is that the drive will be very slow for nowdays standards, but it should work safely. A developer could perhaps increase the timeout period, maybe it is too short for that drive; maybe there is an easy way to do so, I have no idea. Therefore, you could try reporting that to the developer. Else, suggest you write to feedback - but that doesn't mean your problem will (or even might) be solved any time soon. If you are installing SuSE, and you bought it, try support. Other avenues... revise you drive cabling, change it; make sure you are not overclocking you system in any way. Select bios safe defaults. Do this before reporting it as mentioned above, just in case. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson