[Bug 493819] [NEW] Persistent SATA errors possibly indicating disk fault disappeared with new kernel

Mon Dec 7 23:25:04 UTC 2009

Public bug reported:

I'm trying to track down an apparent change in behaviour between the kernels supplied in the most recent packages for Ubuntu Hardy, specifically linux-image-generic 2.6.24.25.27 and linux-image-generic 2.6.24.26.28,
concerning SATA error reporting, supposedly these packages:

https://edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/2.6.24-25.63
https://edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/2.6.24-26.64

I recently observed the following kind of error in my syslog:

Dec  5 19:03:24 jeremy kernel: [  274.853653] ata3.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
Dec  5 19:03:24 jeremy kernel: [  274.853660] ata3.00: BMDMA stat 0x24
Dec  5 19:03:24 jeremy kernel: [  274.853666] ata3.00: cmd c8/00:18:97:c1:5c/00:00:00:00:00/e1 tag 0 dma 12288 in
Dec  5 19:03:24 jeremy kernel: [  274.853667]          res 51/40:00:97:c1:5c/00:00:00:00:00/e1 Emask 0x9 (media error)
Dec  5 19:03:24 jeremy kernel: [  274.853670] ata3.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
Dec  5 19:03:24 jeremy kernel: [  274.853672] ata3.00: error: { UNC }
Dec  5 19:03:24 jeremy kernel: [  274.868536] ata3.00: configured for UDMA/133
Dec  5 19:03:24 jeremy kernel: [  274.868550] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Result: hostbyte=DID_OK driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE,SUGGEST_OK
Dec  5 19:03:24 jeremy kernel: [  274.868554] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Sense Key : Medium Error [current] [descriptor]
Dec  5 19:03:24 jeremy kernel: [  274.868558] Descriptor sense data with sense descriptors (in hex):
Dec  5 19:03:24 jeremy kernel: [  274.868560]         72 03 11 04 00 00 00 0c 00 0a 80 00 00 00 00 00
Dec  5 19:03:24 jeremy kernel: [  274.868568]         01 5c c1 97
Dec  5 19:03:24 jeremy kernel: [  274.868571] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Add. Sense: Unrecovered read error - auto reallocate failed
Dec  5 19:03:24 jeremy kernel: [  274.868577] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 22856087
Dec  5 19:03:24 jeremy kernel: [  274.868593] ata3: EH complete
Dec  5 19:03:24 jeremy kernel: [  274.878168] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] 976773168 512-byte hardware sectors (500108 MB)
Dec  5 19:03:24 jeremy kernel: [  274.889984] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
Dec  5 19:03:24 jeremy kernel: [  274.889989] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
Dec  5 19:03:24 jeremy kernel: [  274.902842] sd 2:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA

These errors started to appear on 3rd December, mostly at or around boot
or restart time, becoming unavoidable on 5th and 6th December. As a
consequence, I have made backups and have been running short smartctl
tests to see what might be occurring; some of these do report the "LBA
of first error" and I have consulted the smartmontools "how to" about
such errors.

According to the statistics generated by smartd and information about
SMART (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-
Monitoring%2C_Analysis%2C_and_Reporting_Technology), there may well be a
problem, specifically with the following attributes with non-zero "raw
values":

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   186   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       774
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       3
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       5
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   200   200   000    Old_age   Offline      -       26

According to "popular wisdom", this means that my disk is failing, yet
since updating to the latter kernel package mentioned above, I don't get
the above syslog messages any more. What I'm trying to work out is
whether the kernel was reporting a real problem or whether this was some
bug that was fixed in the most recent kernel.

The hard disk concerned is a 500GB Western Digital Caviar Green, bought
in January 2009, operating with an "Intel Corporation 82801EB (ICH5)
SATA Controller (rev 02)".

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Dec  7 23:03:13 2009
Dependencies:

DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
Package: linux-image None [modified: /var/lib/dpkg/info/linux-image.list]
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_US.ISO-8859-15
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: linux-meta
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-26-generic i686

** Affects: linux-meta (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

** Tags: apport-bug

-- 
Persistent SATA errors possibly indicating disk fault disappeared with new kernel
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/493819
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