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From: asami@cs.berkeley.edu (Satoshi ASAMI)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions
Subject: IDE or ST-506? [NetBSD-0.9]
Date: 28 Sep 93 03:36:43
Organization: CS Div. - EECS, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720
Lines: 85
Message-ID: <ASAMI.93Sep28033643@moccasin.cs.berkeley.edu>
References: <1993Sep27.033241.15874@wixer.bga.com>
Reply-To: asami@snake.cs.berkeley.edu
NNTP-Posting-Host: moccasin.cs.berkeley.edu
In-reply-to: dpm@wixer.bga.com's message of Mon, 26 Sep 1993 20:32:41 PDT
Howdy. I've installed NetBSD-0.9 on my 386-40 ISA w/ 16MB RAM. It's
a little slow but a full-functional Unix is great!!! Now only if I
can afford a 486 upgrade. But most programs compile easily, that's
the good thing about having *the* BSD Unix! :) (I use HP at school)
The only problem is, my hard disk has been a little shakey. It's
CP30544 (Conner Peripherals' 545MB IDE), entirely devoted to NetBSD,
partitioned like a:100MB, b:64MB: e:rest. I answered "ide" to the
"what type is your hard drive?" question in the installation. The
symptom is: some files get read screwy at times.
For instance, gcc fails with "internal error 11" once in a while.
This problem usually goes away when I reboot the machine. Also,
reading huge files causes a lot of problems, like when I download a
gzipped file, I often can't ungzip it. It sometimes works---look at
this:
===
% sum TeX*
26174 5210 TeX.tar.gz
41328 5210 TeX01.5.tar.gz
53948 5210 TeX01.5.tar.gz.broken
44790 5210 TeX01.5.tar.z
% sum TeX*
26174 5210 TeX.tar.gz
17541 5210 TeX01.5.tar.gz
26174 5210 TeX01.5.tar.gz.broken
49405 5210 TeX01.5.tar.z
% sum TeX*
26174 5210 TeX.tar.gz
26174 5210 TeX01.5.tar.gz
08867 5210 TeX01.5.tar.gz.broken
17541 5210 TeX01.5.tar.z
% sum TeX*
45439 5210 TeX.tar.gz
17541 5210 TeX01.5.tar.gz
17706 5210 TeX01.5.tar.gz.broken
12451 5210 TeX01.5.tar.z
===
These are the files I tried to download, using various methods (like
zmodem, split+zmodem+cat). The checksum of the last try of the last
file was the correct one, and I managed to unpack this archive after
three tries. (When it doesn't work, gunzip complains about invalid
crc.) They all originate from the same file on the host, of course.
fsck at boot time also often finds inconsistencies in the filesystem
after a proper shutdown. Some times, it even gives me the single-user
shell saying it's unable to automatically repair it. All I can do is
to run fsck and answer y to every question, hoping nothing important
is going away.
I tried looking into /usr/lost+found, but when I moved back the
directories (which happened to be /usr/share/groff_font/something and
/usr/src/usr.sbin/rwhod) to their original places, they failed again
on the next fsck so I haven't tried it again.
Enough about the symptoms and now to the real question. I've read
some people mentioning the "ST-506" type drive, about using IDE drives
as this, and such. What does it mean? I suspect my problem is bad
sectors. My hard disk was low-level formatted at the factory, and I
installed NetBSD right onto it. Doesn't IDE do bad sector forwarding,
as the install.notes of 386BSD 0.1 says:
===
WARNING: bad144 is NEVER used with SCSI or IDE disks,
since they have their own bad sector mapping functions.
Since ESDI and IDE drives appear very similar, make sure
before running this command that you have an ESDI drive and
not an IDE drive. SCSI and IDE drives should never have
"hard read error" messages. If you get these messages, the
drive may be misconfigured, or you may require special
assistance.
===
in the "Bad Sector Mapping" section? Do I have to use the ST-506 type
(whatever that is) and run bad144 by myself? (I have never seen a
"hard read error", FYI.)
I've been following this group lately but haven't been able to figure
this one out. Thanks for any help you can offer and keep up with the
good work.
Satoshi
asami@cs.berkeley.edu