Re: 2.4 ate my filesystem on rw-mount

[Tobias Ringstrom]

On Fri, 12 Jan 2001, Vojtech Pavlik wrote:
> Wow. Ok, I'm maintaining the 2.4.0 VIA driver, so I'd like to know more
> about this:
>
> 1) What's the ISA bridge revision?

00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8501 (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8501
00:07.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super] (rev 1b)
00:07.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586 IDE [Apollo] (rev 06)
00:07.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586B USB (rev 0e)
00:07.4 Bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI] (rev 20)
00:07.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super AC97/Audio] (rev 21)
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT86C100A [Rhine 10/100] (rev 06)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Trident Microsystems CyberBlade/i7 (rev 5b)

> 2) What's in /proc/ide/via?

It's not there since I disabled the VIA driver.

> 3) What says hdparm -i on your devices?

/dev/hda:

 Model=SAMSUNG VG34323A (4.32GB), FwRev=GQ200, SerialNo=dW1921060033c8
 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs }
 RawCHS=14896/9/63, TrkSize=32256, SectSize=512, ECCbytes=21
 BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=496kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=off
 CurCHS=14896/9/63, CurSects=-531627904, LBA=yes, LBAsects=8446032
 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
 DMA modes: sdma0 sdma1 sdma2 *mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 *udma2

> 4) If you mount your filesystem read-only, does it read garbage?

Now here's a strange part, or possibly a crusial clue.  When I booted a
2.4.0 kernel (from floppy using the excellent syslinux) with "ro
init=/bin/sh", I could access the filesystem just fine.  I could even
remount the root filesystem rw, and there were no problems.  But I did not
write anything to the disk, since I was convinced that the problem was
gone (this was the second try).  After this I rebooted with
ctrl-alt-delete, forgetting how bad an idea that is with init=/bin/sh,
booted up the RH7 2.2.16 kernel, and fsck was run with no errors.  Now I
though all was well, rebooted from floppy again, but without the init=
part, and poof, it hang.

More interesting may be that I had to turn the computer off and on again
to get BIOS to find the hard drive.  Repeated long reset button presses
did not help.  It is possible that it hung during BIOS hd detection - I
wish I could remember.

I suspect that I could have hung the drive with init=/bin/sh if I would
have done some reading and writing to the device, besides ls.

I think I can spend some more time today trying it out some more.  I will
also try your 3.11 driver, which seems to be an enormous cleanup.  Btw, do
you have a home page for the VIA driver?  A CVS perhaps?  If not, please
consider using sourceforge or something similar.

/Tobias