hard drive cries out in pain at power-off

[Tormod Volden]

Just as the power goes off, a bad sound comes from my Compaq Presario 700 laptop, as if the hard drive (Samsung MP0804H) is pulling the emergency brakes on. This came with 2.6.19.

I have something similar on an Acer TravelMate 8100, but here it came with 2.6.17.

[Ben Collins (ben-collins)]

I'd be more willing to believe that this is a hardware issue, not one of the kernel. The kernel merely sends a generic "stop" command to drives. It doesn't tell it how to stop. Whatever the hardware does after that is its own doing.

I'll see if I can find some similar reports to back this up.

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

I also thought it was just hardware, when I saw this on the Acer laptop. But now this started on the Compaq, where I have never seen it before.

What if the kernel doesn't send any "stop" and the laptop is just powered off?

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

This happens generally at power-off, not only at hibernation. I can reproduce it by booting with init=/bin/bash and running "poweroff -f". I am only changing the kernel. With 2.6.17 it turns quietly off every time, with 2.6.19 it makes the ugly sound almost every time.

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

As discussed with Ben on IRC, I built the viacxxx moduled and included it in the initrd. (FYI, copying it into /lib/modules doesn't take it to the initrd, and blacklisting pata_via doesn't keep it from the initrd - I had to cpio in/out and hand-tune the initrd by hand.)

With the viacxxx (without pata_via) the power-off is quiet, with no ugly sound.

[ɞєᾐ ἂ. (talkingwires)]

I can't boot the 2.6.19 kernel on my machine. But after it freezes or drops into busybox, my drive also makes a loud noise. I actually thought it was one of my optical drives at first, but neither have a disc loaded.

The idea of that sound coming from a HDD is a little frightening.

[ɞєᾐ ἂ. (talkingwires)]

Oh, I meant to add that I have an Abit motherboard with a Via PATA controller.

[Ben Collins (ben-collins)]

Please retest against 2.6.20-2 when it is available in the feisty archive.

[julioromano (romanomarco)]

This bug is not new, see also here:
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/acpi/+bug/68660

and here:
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7674

I can confirm the bug is still present also in kernel 2.6.20-2-386

Bye,
Marco

[Tormod Volden (tormodvolden)]

Thanks for the links, julioromano.
With 2.6.20-2-generic it's the same bad sound on the Acer (but now it doesn't power off at hibernation - just reboots right away - I'll file a new bug on this). On the Compaq I had one quiet poweroff when booting with init=/bin/bash, but a normal hibernation gave an ugly click.

[vexorian (vexorian)]

This problem was fixed by the kernel devs.

I would like to see a kernel update in this regard. It is a critical bug that to me got more weight than any security flaw.

: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=525678

If we let the kernel be unpatched these issues will continue AND continue it is only a matter of time, something we really don't need is to let testimonials about ubuntu killing hdds spread.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux-source-2.6.20 (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]