[SOLVED] every upgrade causes problems.

sijp · 2008-07-16 23:58:17

Hello,

I'm not new to linux, but quite new to archlinux. I'm getting along with it just fine and I'm quite pleased with it. There is only one major problem, each and every time I try to update it using `pacman -Syu`, something wrong happens.

Some of the packages get IO Errors from the hard drive, and after a few seconds the entire system begins to crash, processes stop responding, and then the entire computer freezes.

the Hard drive is a S-ATA drive connected to a RAID controller connected to a PCI slot.
here is lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8753 [P4X266 AGP] (rev 01)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8633 [Apollo Pro266 AGP]
00:09.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6105 [Rhine-III] (rev 8b)
00:0a.0 Mass storage controller: Silicon Image, Inc. SiI 3112 [SATALink/SATARaid] Serial ATA Controller (rev 02)
00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 80)
00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 82)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8235 ISA Bridge
00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 50)
00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 74)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV43 [GeForce 6800 GS] (rev a2)

This time it was nvidia, which I still can't install and copied manually the module to the right directory. But other times other packages made problems.

these are the errors I get (copied from /var/log/errors.log):

Jul 16 16:41:21 Echidna ata4.00: BMDMA2 stat 0x6c0009
Jul 16 16:41:21 Echidna ata4.00: cmd 25/00:20:bf:f1:ee/00:00:1c:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 16384 in
Jul 16 16:41:21 Echidna ata4.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
Jul 16 16:41:21 Echidna ata4.00: error: { UNC }
Jul 16 16:41:21 Echidna end_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 485421521

I'm begining to fear upgrades... help!:)

Shlomi

Last edited by sijp (2008-07-22 17:10:23)

bangkok_manouel · 2008-07-17 00:48:52

Do not fear updates, they're most likely not the cause of the problems you described ("Some of the packages get IO Errors from the hard drive, and after a few seconds the entire system begins to crash, processes stop responding, and then the entire computer freezes.")

Time for fsck I guess.

Leigh · 2008-07-17 08:22:03

I'm not sure this will help you, and it's only a guess, but I had similar issues a long time ago. I was able to resolve them by adding pci=conf1 to the kernel line in /boot/grub/menu.lst

Basically it allows overriding the bios at boot when assigning IRQ/PCI settings, resolving conflicts that were created by the bios.

Anyway, like I said, that's only a guess, as your symptoms could be caused by any number of things.

vacant · 2008-07-17 08:29:25

For some reason my hardware gives those sort of errors whenever I use an xfs file system, and pacman is snail-slow on xfs (so I used pacman-cage/loopback when I tried xfs). Problems cease when I revert to reiserfs, ext3 etc.

sijp · 2008-07-17 10:15:08

Thanks!

vacant - it's a ReiserFS partition.

the hard drive is relativly new, I had it for only a few months, and during fsck it gave me the same errors.

it also added the following error:

bread: Cannot read the block (4325957): (Input/output error).

btw, after the recent update every time I reboot, my X server hangs and I needs to reinstall the entire xorg group and manually copy the nvidia driver for it to work again. that's stange.

Last edited by sijp (2008-07-17 10:16:51)

moljac024 · 2008-07-17 10:35:17

Sounds like your hard drive is faulty. You do still have warranty, right ?

sijp · 2008-07-17 15:03:21

well there is only one bad block. would it be possible to mark it somehow to not be used?
I checked another partition which is 190GB out of 250GB and it was fine. it's just that going all the way to the lab for them to fix this is too much trouble.
there is no unreplacable data in that partition. I keep my important data and my home directory in a different partition.

lucke · 2008-07-17 15:46:47

Well, if you have one bad sector, more may follow.

Check what smartctl from smartmontools package shows.

You can use a badblock list with fsck.

sijp · 2008-07-21 11:41:33

Hey,
you are right. The harddrive was very faulty. SMART gave and error and said I should backup and replace. and so I did.
luckily I still had warranty so they replaced it with a new one. Hopefully it won't happen again anytime soon...

Thanks everyone!

tigrmesh · 2008-07-22 02:06:37

Wonderful! You got it fixed. Please mark this thread as solved. Thanks.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-07-16 23:58:17

[SOLVED] every upgrade causes problems.

#2 2008-07-17 00:48:52

Re: [SOLVED] every upgrade causes problems.

#3 2008-07-17 08:22:03

Re: [SOLVED] every upgrade causes problems.

#4 2008-07-17 08:29:25

Re: [SOLVED] every upgrade causes problems.

#5 2008-07-17 10:15:08

Re: [SOLVED] every upgrade causes problems.

#6 2008-07-17 10:35:17

Re: [SOLVED] every upgrade causes problems.

#7 2008-07-17 15:03:21

Re: [SOLVED] every upgrade causes problems.

#8 2008-07-17 15:46:47

Re: [SOLVED] every upgrade causes problems.

#9 2008-07-21 11:41:33

Re: [SOLVED] every upgrade causes problems.

#10 2008-07-22 02:06:37

Re: [SOLVED] every upgrade causes problems.

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