At 09:28 PM 1/2/1999 -0500, rob.rice wrote:
I just got a new WD2500JBRTL hard drive I can format it reiser filesystem I
can write to it I can ls it BUT when ever I try to read from (cp,du,mv,tar)
it my computer locks up it also locks up when I try to run any reiser file
system util on it right now I'm waiting to hear from award's bios update site
for an update for my bios because my bios can't see that this hard drive is
larger than 137 GB BUT my kernel can see this hard drive as a 250GB hard
drive is there some hdparm setting I can use to fix this or some module I can
load or is this hard drive to large to be used in one partion with reiser
filesystem or is there a kernel patch I need to use in order to accesses this
drive
boycott western digitall for not support linux (and tell them so I have told
them this is the last hard drive I will buy form them until they support
linux)
Calm down, Rob. Based on what you have reported, it is way too early to call for a boycott, or even to complain at all to WD.
The 137 GB problem you see is a BIOS problem. Maybe the latest BIOSes get around it (I don't own anything new enough to test this), but most older ones don't. Linux can see the full 250 GB because it doesn't use the BIOS values to get drive capacity information. Last I knew, Windows (at least through Win2K) had a worse time with these super-big drives than Linux does, because it does rely on the BIOS settings ... I have a couple of unused auxiliary IDE controllers that Maxtor packaged with its largest drives for awhile to let Windows users get around the 137 GB limit.
I had the exact same problem with a 160 GB WD drive I got from Sam's Club - except the BIOS on my media server had the 33 GB limit. BTW, Western Digital still ships ATA/100 cards with some of their drives (it takes a little shopping) - they come with Promise IDE controllers.
From dmesg:
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
PIIX4: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:00:07.1
PIIX4: chipset revision 1
PIIX4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xf000-0xf007, BIOS settings: hda:pio, hdb:pio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xf008-0xf00f, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:pio
Probing IDE interface ide0...
hda: ST340810A, ATA DISK drive
Using cfq io scheduler
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
Probing IDE interface ide1...
hdc: CD-RW IDE5224, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
PDC20268: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:00:0f.0
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 0000:00:0f.0
PDC20268: chipset revision 2
PDC20268: ROM enabled at 0xe8000000
PDC20268: 100% native mode on irq 11
ide2: BM-DMA at 0xe400-0xe407, BIOS settings: hde:pio, hdf:pio
ide3: BM-DMA at 0xe408-0xe40f, BIOS settings: hdg:pio, hdh:pio
Probing IDE interface ide2...
hde: WDC WD1600JB-53EVA0, ATA DISK drive
ide2 at 0xd400-0xd407,0xd802 on irq 11
Probing IDE interface ide3...
Probing IDE interface ide3...
Probing IDE interface ide4...
ide4: Wait for ready failed before probe !
Probing IDE interface ide5...
ide5: Wait for ready failed before probe !
hda: max request size: 128KiB
hda: Host Protected Area detected.
current capacity is 66055248 sectors (33820 MB)
native capacity is 78165360 sectors (40020 MB)
hda: 66055248 sectors (33820 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=65531/16/63, UDMA(33)
hda: cache flushes not supported
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4
hde: max request size: 1024KiB
hde: 312581808 sectors (160041 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=19457/255/63, UDMA(100)
hde: cache flushes supported
hde: hde1
hdc: ATAPI 52X CD-ROM CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, UDMA(33)Notice how /dev/hda is limited by the BIOS, but /dev/hde is not? Most add-on IDE controllers fix BIOS limitations - I've even got an old 486 server sitting in my closet that has an add-on ISA IDE card to let it use >1GB drives - pretty high-end back in the mid-90's.
If you are not using this drive as your root (/) filesystem ... in practice, that usually means it is not /dev/hda ... then ignore the BIOS problem and let Linux handle that part. If you are using it for boot and root, you'll have to partition it, at least enough that the BIOS and lilo (or your bootloader of choice) can find the kernel to load it.
I haven't yet used a drive this size as the boot drive, but if I were to do so, I'd probably try something like this:
/dev/hda1 about 50 MB, mount as /boot /dev/hda2 swap, whatever size you need or want /dev/hda3 about 120 GB, mount as / /dev/hda4 remainder, probably mount as /home
This is probably not the only arrangement that would work, and I can't actually guarantee that it would work. But it likely would. Oh, and I would make hda1 ext2, just to be safe.
Beyond that ... please describe the problem more carefully. You say ls works, and ls does require reading the drive. With a 250 GB drive, the other commands you mention all either do (du) or might (depending on unreported details) involve a WHOLE LOT of reading on a 250 GB drive, which can take a long time (minutes, even if everything IS workingg right). So please test more systematically, and please be as exact as you can about what you are calling "locks up" (for example, does the console not respond if you press ENTER while a cp or mv or tar operation is running? if you run top in another xterm or console or telnet or ssh session, can you switch to it and does it continue to run?). Can you cat or more a short text file, or does that cause a hang? What about df?
One thing you should check (this is true of any IDE drive, any size) is that you have DMA enabled. If you use hdparm to query the drive settings, it will report using_dma as on or off. If it is off, set it (as root) with
hdparm -d 1 /dev/hd*
replacing * with the right drive designator. If DMA is not enabled, the sorts of operations you report cas causing the "lock ups" will be painfully slow with the size drive you have, and annoying slow with any modern drive (by which I mean 40 GB and up).
You might also wnat to try swapping the IDE cable - or re-seating it.
I don't run reiserfs here, but I've run drives ranging from 160 GB to 250 GB for well over a year now, using ext2 and ext3, with no trouble at all, in non-boot settings.
Finally, if you want technical help with kernel details, it helps to mention what kernel you are using and what distro it is from (because all distros I know of customize their kernels, at least a little bit).
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