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GTVincent
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 26 Oct 2002
Posts: 91
Location: Las Vegas, NV
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 Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2003 11:51 pm Post subject: IDE LED remains on |
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I'm having the strange behavior that, judging by the hard drive led constantly burning, my epox 8KHA+ seems to always be accessing the hard drive. When I accidentally forget to set that during a reinstall (not related to this 'problem'), the light was working as expected. I thought I had fixed it until I tried to optimize my kernel and found that VIA support wasn't even turned on in the first place.The computer works fine and it's no biggy. I'm just wondering if there are more people with this kind of weird problem. But I wouldn't mind fixing this little cosmetic bug either 
edit: Maybe it helps to know that I'm using the gentoo-2.4.20-r2 kernel. And it does not occur under Solaris 9, so I'm pretty sure that my drive isn't broken, even though it's one of the infamous IBM series... |
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ben_h
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 26 Nov 2002
Posts: 118
Location: Australia
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| Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2003 2:45 am Post subject: |
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Nothing wrong with the disk -- it's probably something to do with your BIOS, and the kernel, or _something_.
Maybe try flashing your BIOS.
Did you say you've recompiled the kernel with VIA chipset support? If not, do
And, if you notice the debug LEDs on the motherboard flashing when the CPU's under load, that's normal too. A mate of mine has an 8KHA+ and under Linux the debug LEDs act as a CPU usage meter -- the more crazy they're going, the more load it's under |
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GTVincent
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 26 Oct 2002
Posts: 91
Location: Las Vegas, NV
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| Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2003 8:46 pm Post subject: |
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| benhoskings wrote: | Nothing wrong with the disk -- it's probably something to do with your BIOS, and the kernel, or _something_.
Maybe try flashing your BIOS.
Did you say you've recompiled the kernel with VIA chipset support? If not, do
And, if you notice the debug LEDs on the motherboard flashing when the CPU's under load, that's normal too. A mate of mine has an 8KHA+ and under Linux the debug LEDs act as a CPU usage meter -- the more crazy they're going, the more load it's under |
Yeah I know... that's pretty cool. Foldingathome causese hypnotic sequences that will compete with pot anytime  . Epox says that as soon as POST is over and done with, the OS can have it's evil ways with those LEDs. I shudder to think what a certain other OS would do with it (probably a pair of $$'s...).
The VIA component is compiled into the kernel at this moment, and the red HD led is mockingly staring me in the eye ("you talkin' to me?" comes to mind...). When VIA wasn't in there, but all the default chipset settings (like CMD640/RZ1000 fixes, Intel PIIX stuff and the like, I must have just forgotten that menu option entirely when I first built that kernel) the HD LED was flickering only when necessary. I haven't a clue why. |
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ben_h
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 26 Nov 2002
Posts: 118
Location: Australia
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| Posted: Fri Apr 25, 2003 1:52 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | I shudder to think what a certain other OS would do with it (probably a pair of $$'s...) |
lol! Nice one. Actually I hate to spoil it for you, but this box runs blows as well and it just stays boringly at FF
I had an Athlon box a while ago, based on an Asus KT133A board. If I had IDE devices attached to the cables, but with no power connected to them, the IDE LED would always be on dimly. It'd flash bright on read/write like normal, but it'd idle at a dim brightness instead of at nothing. (I had things connected but not plugged in, e.g., when I was installing blows2k and I was tricking it into thinking it was on the first HDD, by unplugging the ones that came before it. It craps all over your first disk if it's not on it. Bloody Windows.)
So, it could be that. Is there anything plugged into an IDE cable without power? |
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GTVincent
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 26 Oct 2002
Posts: 91
Location: Las Vegas, NV
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| Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2003 7:40 pm Post subject: |
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| benhoskings wrote: | | Quote: | | I shudder to think what a certain other OS would do with it (probably a pair of $$'s...) |
lol! Nice one. Actually I hate to spoil it for you, but this box runs blows as well and it just stays boringly at FF
[..]
So, it could be that. Is there anything plugged into an IDE cable without power? |
Nope... and I seem to remember that on previous kernels it does not occur. I've downloaded the 2.5 kernel, but havent' gotten to try that yet.
I'm wondering if it's the state of the motherboard, which is, I believe, about a year to a year & a half old, even though I treat all my computers (6, soon to be 7) with all due respect. It also seems to have problems with more than one memory module, emitting an endless litany of long beeps and refusing to start when there's more than one.
I'm basically what you'd call an Asus guy, and the Epox was a big step for me. This 8KHA+ has always felt a little sloppier (note that I say 'felt', I have no proof of it) than the Asus boards I own. I'm awaiting an 8RDA+ and I'm very curious how that one will behave... |
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NatuNobilis
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 25 Feb 2003
Posts: 88
Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2003 2:37 am Post subject: |
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Hey, I have this same problem with my MSI KT3Ultra-2R.
I was using vanilla-sources, but I felt like trying something else. So, I first went for ck-sources. I worked well, but gentoo-sources seemed to have some ck patches (I thought, maybe the gentoo people choose only the best ones for us and put them in gentoo-sources).
So, I went for gentoo-sources. That's it, my HDD led has been on since then. I switched back to vanilla, but the led didn't switch back off.
The interesting part is that my config file is the same now as it was for the first vanilla kernel I compiled (which had no problem)! So, what can have changed from my first vanilla compilation?
I'm inclined into thinking this is something that loads at boot time, but I have already double-checked all my files in /etc/init.d, and they give me no hint at all. Even hdparm is perfectly ok.
I'll try NOT enabling VIA IDE support. Does anyone think this could be a solution?
Thanks everyone in advance!
NatuNobilis |
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El_Presidente_Pufferfish
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Joined: 11 Jul 2002
Posts: 1179
Location: Seattle
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2003 3:26 am Post subject: |
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| is it the journal of your filesystem writing to disk? |
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El_Presidente_Pufferfish
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Joined: 11 Jul 2002
Posts: 1179
Location: Seattle
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| Posted: Tue May 20, 2003 3:26 am Post subject: |
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| is it the journal of your filesystem writing to disk? |
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NatuNobilis
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 25 Feb 2003
Posts: 88
Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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| Posted: Wed May 21, 2003 3:57 am Post subject: |
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| El_Presidente_Pufferfish wrote: | | is it the journal of your filesystem writing to disk? |
How can I check this?
top tells me that kjournald is sleeping, and also kreiserfsd, both using 0.0% of my memory and CPU. Is this the right way?
I emerged gkrellm to check this, but it somehow came without the disk "builtin"...
Thanks in advance!
NatuNobilis |
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spectre
n00b
Joined: 11 May 2003
Posts: 40
Location: Virginia USA
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| Posted: Wed May 21, 2003 4:46 am Post subject: |
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Funny! I have the same problem on only 1 of the 7 gentoo boxes I have installed. (I must like Gentoo) It is a Compaq Professional Workstation AP550 with an Intel 82801AA IDE interface and a 100G Western Digital drive (BIOS flashed to support). Running GKrellm shows no unusual disk activity but the light is always on.
I have Generic PCI IDE chipset support and Intel PIIXn support built into the kernel but nothing else. All of my other boxes either say PIIX4 IDE or VIA chipset from /sbin/lspci but nothing matches this box exactly. I wonder if I have the right chipset compiled in or is it just using the generic support and that is causing the light to stay on. RedHat, SuSE, and Mandrake did not exhibit this behavior so I assume it is my fault. I am running gaming-sources-r3.
Anyone have an idea? |
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NatuNobilis
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 25 Feb 2003
Posts: 88
Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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| Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2003 12:49 am Post subject: |
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My problem has been solved. I don't know exactly how or why, but the LED exhibits normal behavior now.
The only thing I did was:
I added ide-scsi into modules.autoload, so that I could use my CD burner (it was completely useless before that, 'cause I had "hdd=ide-scsi" in lilo.conf but the module was not loaded ever; I just had never used my CD burner with gentoo).
So, now I have:
the line
append="hdd=ide-scsi" is in my lilo.conf, and the module ide-scsi is set to be autoloaded on every boot.
The first time I booted the machine with ide-scsi in modules.autoload, the HDD LED went off, finally behaving normally again.
I hope this will be useful to someone.
NatuNobilis |
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