System completely locked by HD?

Message

MadEgg · Post by **MadEgg** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 11:16 am

Just before 12 PM I went away, while my Gentoo box was doing an emerge -uD world. When I came back I found it locked tight. Couldn't use sysrq, couldn't SSH in from another box, completely dead.

In /var/log/everything/current I found this:

Code: Select all

Jul  4 11:50:00 [fcron] process already running: root's /usr/bin/test -x /usr/sbin/run-crons && /usr/sbin/run-crons
                - Last output repeated twice -
Jul  4 12:00:00 [fcron] Job rm -f /var/spool/cron/lastrun/cron.hourly started for user root (pid 30599)
Jul  4 12:00:02 [fcron] Job rm -f /var/spool/cron/lastrun/cron.hourly completed
Jul  4 12:03:22 [kernel] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x2 frozen
Jul  4 12:03:22 [kernel] ata1.00: cmd c8/00:08:a8:39:bb/00:00:00:00:00/e3 tag 0 cdb 0x0 data 4096 in
Jul  4 12:03:22 [kernel]          res 40/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
Jul  4 12:03:29 [kernel] ata1: port is slow to respond, please be patient (Status 0xd0)

And after that the messages from my system rebooting. Seems that it was hanging somewhere on the HD. Thing is, the HD mentioned is not my main HD, it's just a HD with extra storage for movies and music and the like. So it's in no way required for the normal functioning of my system. It shouldn't lock up completely then, should it? Any way I can diagnose this any further, fix it, whatsoever?

Abraxas · Post by **Abraxas** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 4:37 pm

Perhaps you have a bad HDD. I would test it before you do anything else.

MadEgg · Post by **MadEgg** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 11:02 am

That doesn't really matter does it? As I said, it's not the main HDD, so the system is not dependent on it for normal functioning. If I put in a bad floppy in my floppy-drive then the system should not lock either, right?
I know what the problem was with the HDD, the HDD mentioned is an external HDD and the power cable was a bit loose and it fell out, so it powered off. But still, I think that when the only function of the HDD is to store MP3's and movies, the system should not lock when there's a problem with it, right?

Janne Pikkarainen · Post by **Janne Pikkarainen** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 11:08 am

At least with cheap mainboards a total lockup can happen. If for example SATA bus gets locked or some power spike caused by suddenly powered off HD, the hardware itself crashes. That's a situation which no OS can handle.

MadEgg · Post by **MadEgg** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 2:22 pm

Well, it's not a cheap mobo as you can see in my signature. And a powerspike also seems unlikely since the HDD that powered off what in an external HDD-case with an external power supply cable connected using an E-SATA cable.
But the mainboard does not support SATA hot-plugging so it could indeed be a hardware failure then. Still not entirely conviced though, but whatever. I don't intend on unplugging my power cable on a regular basis anyway

Abraxas · Post by **Abraxas** » Sun Jul 08, 2007 1:33 am

I've seen bad drives lock up the whole OS when a lot of data is trying to be read from the disk or written to the disk and it keeps erroring and resetting. Some really fubarred drives will lock up the whole OS just by having them plugged in.