Hi, I have been using this laptop for a few months now with FreeBSD without any problems with the hard disk however today as I installed editors/vim the system crashed (without a core dump or any message). When ever the system boots (and proceeds to do a fsck on ad0e (/usr)) it also crashes without any message. I have tried the following commands: # dd if=/dev/ad0 of=/dev/null bs=1M ( System crashes) # smartctl -C -t short ( Succeeds ) # smartctl -C -t long ( Failes with a message: ad0: FAILED - SMART timed out) If I force the mounting of /usr without fsck then the system does boot (but I am not sure how stable it is). I have updated the kernel to cvs RELENG_7 from a few hours ago (and it compiled without a problem after force mounting (and using tmpfs as obj directory, did not try any other way) I have no idea what is wrong (if the disk has corrupted should the kernel not display error messages?). Can you please help/advise? Thank you in advance. David
> I have been using this laptop for a few months now with FreeBSD without any > problems with the hard disk however today as I installed editors/vim the > system crashed (without a core dump or any message). > > When ever the system boots (and proceeds to do a fsck on ad0e (/usr)) it > also crashes without any message. I have tried the following commands: > > # dd if=/dev/ad0 of=/dev/null bs=1M ( System crashes) > > # smartctl -C -t short ( Succeeds ) > # smartctl -C -t long ( Failes with a message: ad0: FAILED - SMART timed > out) >Corrupt disk? -- regards Claus When lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentlest gamester is the soonest winner. Shakespeare
On Thu, Nov 08, 2007 at 10:40:49PM +0200, David Naylor wrote:> I have been using this laptop for a few months now with FreeBSD without any > problems with the hard disk however today as I installed editors/vim the > system crashed (without a core dump or any message). > > When ever the system boots (and proceeds to do a fsck on ad0e (/usr)) it > also crashes without any message. I have tried the following commands: > > # dd if=/dev/ad0 of=/dev/null bs=1M ( System crashes) > > # smartctl -C -t short ( Succeeds ) > # smartctl -C -t long ( Failes with a message: ad0: FAILED - SMART timed out)Sounds like something mechanical inside of the disk is failing, or possibly the drive firmware is somewhat buggy when it comes to handling bad blocks. What brand/model of hard disk is this? atacontrol output would suffice. I'm just curious (personal interest).> I have no idea what is wrong (if the disk has corrupted should the kernel > not display error messages?). Can you please help/advise?Not necessarily, although I would expect to see a bus timeout of some kind, but it doesn't surprise me that you don't see one. If a long SMART test results in the drive timing out and falling off the bus, there's a much bigger problem at hand. There is a possibility that the system is simply going bad in some way (RAM issues or mainboard that's broken somehow), but all your problems seem to indicate issues with the disk. If I was in your shoes, I would try to get all the data off that disk, purchase a replacement, install FreeBSD on it, and restore your data. I'd then take the old/possibly-bad disk and download one of the drive fitness test utilities from the manufacturer's website. Run that and see if anything comes up / if anything bad happens. Laptop hard disks are sometimes a pain to deal with (some laptop manufacturers have BIOS tweakery where they refuse to recognise any hard disk other than ones of a specific brand/model. I haven't seen this in recent years, but it's something I've seen in the past), so I wish you luck. Laptops -- such a pain. -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
Hi, On 8 Nov 2007, at 20:40, David Naylor wrote:> [possible disk problem] > > I have no idea what is wrong (if the disk has corrupted should the > kernel > not display error messages?). Can you please help/advise?A flaky disk drive (rather than a corrupt filesystem on a good disk) will not necessarily talk enough sense for drivers to behave as we'd all like. If you suspect the disk hardware, your first recourse should be to the manufacturer's diagnostic tool - they all have one, usually a bootable floppy (or CD these days), look on the disk manufacturer's website. SMART is fine if the disk is working and may even help with an incipient failure that hasn't done any serious damage yet. Otherwise the manufacturer's diagnostic is your best bet. -- Bob Bishop +44 (0)118 940 1243 rb@gid.co.uk fax +44 (0)118 940 1295