A DMA problem with SATA hard drive

**Igi_BG** · 06-07-2006

Hi
I have really bad time with hard drives this spring. Now I have a brand new 80GB Seagate SATA disk but I cant switch the DMA on. I am worried about that because the disk is vary slow - allways thinking

and the system is not working smoothly. I have a P4/3Ghz with Gigabyte 915 motherboard and 512Mb RAM and the computer is slow. for example it takes more then 25 minutes to check a 9GB partition with 'badblocks' while on a AMD/1,7Ghz it takes 3minutes!! I read I have to compile a kernel to turn the DMA on but it is vary complex and difficult for me. Is there any other way to solve the problem?
Thanks

**antidrugue** · 06-07-2006

What is the kernel you are using?

Code:

uname -a

What is the output of

Code:

hdparm /dev/sda

or whichever is your drive letter...

If you properly configured the drive as SATA, you don't even need to worry about DMA.

**Igi_BG** · 06-08-2006

uname -a
Linux anelia 2.4.31 #6 Sun Jun 5 19:04:47 PDT 2005 i686 unknown unknown GNU/Linux

hdparm /dev/sda
/dev/sda: No such device or address -
I know that is strange but my disk is hda instead of sda. A friend told me motherboard is "emulating" something so the drive is hda. I am sure I have a SATA disk because I pluged it myself

**antidrugue** · 06-08-2006

Originally Posted by Igi_BG

uname -a
Linux anelia 2.4.31 #6 Sun Jun 5 19:04:47 PDT 2005 i686 unknown unknown GNU/Linux

2.4 kernels in general are somewhat less SATA friendly.

Originally Posted by Igi_BG

hdparm /dev/sda
/dev/sda: No such device or address -
I know that is strange but my disk is hda instead of sda. A friend told me motherboard is "emulating" something so the drive is hda.

Yes, that is possible, you may want to take a look in the BIOS and see how your SATA controller is set : either "Legacy Mode" or "Enhanced Mode" (or something similar).

So if your hard drive isn't recognized as /dev/sda, then try

Code:

fdisk -l

To make sure which drive letter it is. It's probably /dev/hda, so then try

Code:

hdparm /dev/hda

Then, please post the output of

Code:

lspci | grep -i ide

and of

Code:

lspci | grep -i sata

**Igi_BG** · 06-09-2006

root@anelia:~# hdparm /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
multcount = 16 (on)
IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit)
unmaskirq = 0 (off)
using_dma = 0 (off)
keepsettings = 0 (off)
readonly = 0 (off)
readahead = 8 (on)
geometry = 9728/255/63, sectors = 156295279, start = 0

lspci | grep -i ide
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FW (ICH6/ICH6W) SATA Controller (rev 03)

lspci | grep -i sata
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FW (ICH6/ICH6W) SATA Controller (rev 03)

I dont know if this helps there is a message before the lilo's screen :
Master drive SMART capability disabled.

I looked in the BIOS but found nothing about this. Do you have any idea?
Thanks for the help

**antidrugue** · 06-09-2006

Originally Posted by Igi_BG

00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FW (ICH6/ICH6W) SATA Controller (rev 03)

The module typically associated with this controller is called "ata_piix". I don't think it is present in 2.4 kernels though.

You can try to enable DMA manualy and see if it works (which I don't think it will on a SATA drive) :

Code:

hdparm -d1 /dev/hda

Upgrading to a 2.6 kernel would be a good idea.

More info here :
http://mandrivausers.org/lofiversion...hp?t29534.html

**Igi_BG** · 06-10-2006

Hi again
I tried to follow your advise and started upgrading to 2.6 kernel. And now the only way to boot Slack is from the installdisk.....

First I installed kernel-generic and kernel-modules. Then I used

mkinitrd -c -k 2.6.13 -m reiserfs:ata_piix

to load the modules: the first is my root fs.

I edit lilo.conf to boot with initrd.

When I reboot I get the message:

RAMDISK: Couldn't find valid RAM disk image starting at 0.
VFS: Cannot open root device "302" or unknown-block(3,2)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
kernel panic - not syncing:VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(3,2)

the files are:
rootdev: /dev/hda2
rootfs: reiserfs

both are correct and I dont know what is wrong with the options. Help please?

**Reeman** · 06-13-2006

Could be that you did not get a vmlinuz in the right place. If you compiled from somewhere other than usr/src it might have put the kernel in the wrong place! Did you do a make menuconfig, make, make install or did you intentionally blow away your old config? Check what you have in /boot ....the way I upgrade my slackware kernel is to unzip the source to usr/src and then go through a make menuconfig and the rest. With slackware 10.2 it just updates lilo for you then uses the existing init in /boot I just make sure that all the right hardware is compiled in as modules and that dma is turned on. I have not had any trouble with doing my compile this way, it does not seem to fail. I can boot either 2.4 or the latest 2.6 or even some custom kernels that I have for 2 sound card audio work.

**Igi_BG** · 06-13-2006

Hm i didn't compile the 2.6 kernel because the first time I upgraded 2.4 on another pc it ran perfectly just installing the packages and making initrd. But the pc didn't have a SATA disk....
So you suggest I compile the kernel. Is there default options for the things I don't want to change because if I am to decide for everything I will surely mess up somewhere?
Thanks for the help

**antidrugue** · 06-13-2006

Originally Posted by Igi_BG

RAMDISK: Couldn't find valid RAM disk image starting at 0.
VFS: Cannot open root device "302" or unknown-block(3,2)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
kernel panic - not syncing:VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(3,2)

the files are:
rootdev: /dev/hda2
rootfs: reiserfs

both are correct and I dont know what is wrong with the options. Help please?

Well, now that you have a 2.6 kernel, your hard drive is being detected as /dev/sda and not /dev/hda as it was before. You have to change your lilo/grub configuration accordingly.

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