Harddrive errors

[Territorial]

Lately I'm getting trouble from my hardrive, and it seems to coincide with the installation of Sabayon 3.4e (fresh install)
It boots fine, but after a few minutes of regular use, applications start to return strange errors like "access denied", "read-only filesystem" and the like.
e2fsck does not report any problems with the drive, and all data appears to be intact (i have copied backups just to be sure)
An endless amount of errors similar to the following can be found in dmesg:

Code: Select all

[31806.472628] sd 4:0:0:0: [sda] 390721968 512-byte hardware sectors (200050 MB)
[31806.487567] ata5.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
[31806.487572] ata5.00: (BMDMA stat 0x66)
[31806.487579] ata5.00: cmd ca/00:08:af:6f:04/00:00:00:00:00/e0 tag 0 cdb 0x1e data 4096 out
[31806.487580]          res 50/00:00:b6:6f:04/00:00:00:00:00/e0 Emask 0x20 (host bus error)
[31806.534016] ata5.00: configured for UDMA/100
[31806.725482] ata5.01: configured for UDMA/33
[31806.725502] ata5: EH complete
[31806.710961] sd 4:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
[31806.710966] sd 4:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[31806.727999] sd 4:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[31806.728022] sd 4:0:0:0: [sda] 390721968 512-byte hardware sectors (200050 MB)
[31806.728032] sd 4:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
[31806.728035] sd 4:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[31806.728049] sd 4:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[31807.285627] ata5.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
[31807.285633] ata5.00: (BMDMA stat 0x66)
[31807.285640] ata5.00: cmd ca/00:10:1f:44:a9/00:00:00:00:00/e1 tag 0 cdb 0x1e data 8192 out
[31807.285642]          res 50/00:00:2e:44:a9/00:00:00:00:00/e1 Emask 0x20 (host bus error)


I suspect this is a hardware issue (faulty IDE controller/motherboard).
Could this be a problem with the drive itself, or with a kernel driver?

[Fitzcarraldo]

If you can download and burn a copy of The Ultimate Boot CD (do it on another PC, if possible):

http://ubcd.sourceforge.net/

then there are several HDD diagnostic tools on it which may help you find out whether or not your hardware is the culprit.

[j7uy5]

Also, do you have another OS on the drive? If so, do you get errors in that OS as well?

[Territorial]

it seems the problem has something to do with ndiswrapper.
If i don't load ndiswrapper(for my wifi card), there are no issues.
dmesg snippet:

[ 1214.774920] ndiswrapper version 1.47 loaded (smp=yes)
[ 1214.851094] ndiswrapper: driver 2802w (SMC,04/29/2004, 3.0.11.1) loaded
[ 1214.851313] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:03:03.0[A] -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 21
[ 1214.852095] ndiswrapper: using IRQ 21
[ 1216.223307] Device driver wlan0 lacks bus and class support for being resumed.
[ 1216.223520] wlan0: ethernet device 00:04:e2:d5:cc:38 using NDIS driver: 2802w, version: 0x3000b, NDIS version: 0x501, vendor: 'SMC2802W 2.4GHz 54 Mbps Wireless PCI Adapter', 1260:3890.5.conf
[ 1216.223565] wlan0: encryption modes supported: WEP; TKIP with WPA; AES/CCMP with WPA
[ 1216.223627] usbcore: registered new interface driver ndiswrapper
[ 1245.263796] ata5.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
[ 1245.263801] ata5.00: (BMDMA stat 0x66)
[ 1245.263807] ata5.00: cmd ca/00:40:a2:35:2a/00:00:00:00:00/e4 tag 0 cdb 0x1e data 32768 out
[ 1245.263809] res 50/00:00:e1:35:2a/00:00:00:00:00/e4 Emask 0x20 (host bus error)
[ 1245.310111] ata5.00: configured for UDMA/100
[ 1245.501528] ata5.01: configured for UDMA/33
[ 1245.501544] ata5: EH complete
[ 1245.501752] sd 4:0:0:0: [sda] 390721968 512-byte hardware sectors (200050 MB)
[ 1245.501901] sd 4:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
[ 1245.501904] sd 4:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[ 1245.501921] sd 4:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[ 1277.809638] ata5.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0

Unfortunately, there is no way to get the wifi (pci) card to work without using ndiswrapper (as far as I know).
I use UTP cable wherever possible, unfortunately, here it is not

[j7uy5]

I suppose you already surmised this: that sounds like a bug. Probably won't get any support from the vendor, since the driver is not intended for Linux.

You probably have tried configuring the kernel to use the PRISM chips, but if not, it is possible that doing so would eliminate the need for the NDIS wrapper. Or try emerging the PRISM54 package.