On Jan 19, 2008 1:08 PM, Nick Zeljkovic
Hi,
I'm having problems activating NCQ on Asus P5B-MX , Seagate Barracuda ST3250410AS (250GB) with Opensuse 10.3 installed. Before installation I've set in BIOS Enhanced IDE configuration for S-ATA mode (from my understanding that enables advanced features like NCQ), installed the system no problem. After first boot I've noticed ahci driver wasn't loaded, only ata_piix, so I've edited /etc/sysconfig/kernel and added ahci before ata_piix driver, rebuilt initrd, edited modprobe.conf and replaced ata_piix occurrences with ahci. Original line: # ata_piix can't handle ICH6 in AHCI mode install ata_piix /sbin/modprobe ahci 2>&1 |:; /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install ata_piix
My line: # ata_piix can't handle ICH6 in AHCI mode install ahci /sbin/modprobe ahci 2>&1 |:; /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install ahci
After reboot I saw ahci loaded under libata but after ata_piix libata | ata_piix, ahci
and actually used was ata_piix despite being loaded first. I've then: # dmesg|grep NCQ
And got a line back like:
ata3.00: ATA-7, 321672960 sectors: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)
# echo 31 > /sys/block/sda/device/queue_depth
resulted in permission denied. (as I found on linux-ata FAQ) Further reading on linux-ata FAQ says: "If the line containing the sector count and maximum UDMA speed does not mention NCQ, your drive does not support it." I'm puzzled since I have UDMA showing on: # dmesg|grep ata3
Which displays all disk info, and "NCQ (depth 0/32)" would mean NCQ is present but disabled.
From what I can see disk should support NCQ and I was informed by person who sold it to me that it was NCQ ready. (I specifically wanted NCQ disk).
I don't know if I'm making a mistake somewhere or disk just doesn't support it. I'm in for some help please!
P.S. Yes I've rebooted ;)
-- Best regards, Nick Zeljkovic
Nick, Linux'es implementation of NCQ had some fundamental problems that have been fixed in the soon to be released 2.6.24 Due to the bug, a bunch of drives got blacklisted. The majority of that blacklist has been removed from the 2.6.24 rc series. I have not read about those patches having been released by Novell for the SUSE kernels. (A Novell employee found the problem and wrote the fix so I would hope his work will get into their kernel eventually.) So, you can either wait for that to happen (if it happens), or you can move to a recent KOTD kernel. FYI: I don't know how stable the KOTD kernels are right now. 2.6.24 has been very slow to get released, so I assume there must be some regression(s) they are trying to resolve currently. Greg -- Greg Freemyer Litigation Triage Solutions Specialist http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregfreemyer First 99 Days Litigation White Paper - http://www.norcrossgroup.com/forms/whitepapers/99%20Days%20whitepaper.pdf The Norcross Group The Intersection of Evidence & Technology http://www.norcrossgroup.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org