I installed Mandrake 7.1 on several computers at work and everything
worked flawlessly. However, I installed it on my home computer, and
discovered a bug. My primary HD remains readable, but my second HD
(slave drive on the same IDE bus) becomes unreadable. Actually, it
appears to read, but sometimes a single bit will be set that shouldn't
be. It's about a one in a million chance, but one bit in a million
means attempting to gunzip any file over 125K usually results in an
error, only extremely small RPMs can be installed, etc.
I have an identical copy of a particular large file on my primary and
secondary HD. If I compare the two (with "cmp"), it reports a difference
at a particular byte, and continues to report it at that byte. But if I
reboot, it reports the first difference at a different byte. (Perhaps
caching accounts for this -- rebooting clears the cache and read errors
are more or less random.)
This probably did not occur in 7.0. It also disappears if I switch to
kernel-linus. It reappears if I switch back to the standard kernel
(either the one off the final 7.1 CD or the new one in updates). From
this I surmise the problem is caused by one of the kernel patches that
was added between 7.0 and 7.1.
Here's a bit of hardware info, let me know if you want anything else:
Excerpt from dmesg (booting under kernel-2.2.16-9mdk):
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 6.30
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
PIIX4: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 39
PIIX4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xf000-0xf007, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xf008-0xf00f, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:DMA
hda: IBM-DJNA-352030, ATA DISK drive
hdb: QUANTUM Bigfoot TX8.0AT, ATA DISK drive
hdc: CREATIVE DVD-ROM DVD6240E, ATAPI CDROM drive
hdd: Hewlett-Packard CD-Writer Plus 8100, ATAPI CDROM drive
ide2: ports already in use, skipping probe
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: IBM-DJNA-352030, 19470MB w/1966kB Cache, CHS=2482/255/63
hdb: QUANTUM Bigfoot TX8.0AT, 7665MB w/69kB Cache, CHS=977/255/63
hdc: ATAPI 24X DVD-ROM drive, 512kB Cache
(hdb is the one that reads incorrectly.)
Excerpt from /proc/pci:
Bus 0, device 7, function 1:
IDE interface: Intel 82371AB PIIX4 IDE (rev 1).
Medium devsel. Fast back-to-back capable. Master Capable. Latency=32.
I/O at 0xf000 [0xf001].
(I'll include the entire /proc/pci in an attachment.)
