SATA disk attached to HPT371N controler is very slow or don't work at all

[Pēteris Krišjānis]

1. Get computer with (usually built-in) HPT371 series controller (mine is HPT371N) with SATA hard disk attached to it;
2. Boot on this system with Gutsy Live CD;
3. Try to access, format, create partitions or write to SATA hard disk. It's slow or operation ends with failure;
4. Boot on system with Feisty Live CD;
5. There is no errors while accessing SATA hard disk;

This is regression reported and (propably) fixed by Alan Cox in 2.6.23
http://www.eu.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.23
See commit 64a8170975947978ea4094dd6c4b1f41119d6ae6

I submited this bug for reference purpose, because I hope with Hardy release this bug will be gone, but this should be checked. Of course, if someone could backport fix mentioned above to Gutsy 2.6.22 kernel, that would rock, but I guess it would be not that high priority.

[Pēteris Krišjānis (pecisk-gmail)]

I must correct myself:
1) Fix mentioned in previous comment refers to Very Experimental pata_hpt371x driver, which is disabled in Gutsy kernel (symbol CONFIG_PATA_HPT37X);
2) Therefore bug is for old driver 'hpt366' (symbol CONFIG_BLK_DEV_HPT366);

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Hi Peteris,

Thank you for the report. I'm tagging this as 'hardy-kernel-candidate' to make sure we carry this report forward to the new kernel. The Hardy kernel should be released for testing relatively soon. It would be great if you'd be willing to test and report back your results. Thanks!

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

The Hardy Heron kernel was recently uploaded for testing. We'd really appreciate it if you could try testing with this newer kernel and verify if this issue still exists. Unfortunately, the Hardy Heron Alpha1 LiveCD was released with the older 2.6.22 kernel. You'll have to manually install the newer Hardy Heron kernel in order to test. This should not be the case for Alpha2. However, here are the instructions to install (if you choose to do so):

1) edit the file /etc/apt/sources.list and add the following line:

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hardy main restricted

2) sudo apt-get update
3) sudo apt-get install linux-image-2.6.24-1-generic
4) reboot and select the new kernel from the grub menu

After you've tested, please feel free to revert back - ie boot into the old kernel, sudo apt-get remove linux-image-2.6.24-1-generic, and remove the line from /etc/apt/sources.list . Please update this report with your results. Thanks in advance!

[Pēteris Krišjānis (pecisk-gmail)]

Ok, here we go - test with linux-image-2.6.24.

1) I tested with daily Live CD 01-08-2008 (2.6.24-2-generic), it loaded ok, then I tried to select partitions on disk on that controller and format them. Result was total freeze which I could end only with reset. Freeze started slowly, as box were getting overwhelmed by malicious data. After reboot I got borked GRUB at MBR, as it seems tried to write partition table and failed. I have to mention that Live CD with Gutsy kernel, it also crashed, but it didn't succeed in writing anything in hard disk. See dmesg attached for Live CD dmesg with information about devices;

2) Then I tried your suggested method in last comment. I got linux-image-2.6.24-3-generic. Result is:
* Slower reading, as mentioned. However, it didn't crash or stopped, I can boot it all the time. Just slowly reading and writing, andwriting is also ok, no bad data or freeze;
* Strange errors from CD-ROM device (/dev/hdc), which could be part of problems. For example, when I booted in kernel, message about CD with data and music appeared, however there was no CD in device. Also attached dmesg-hardy-hdd.txt for dmesg dump;

I can do any other tests, as I leave this kernel installed for now. Just tell me what you need.

[Pēteris Krišjānis (pecisk-gmail)]

And here dmesg resulted from your suggestion.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Hi Peteris,

Sorry for the delayed response. It sounds like you are seeing a small bit of improvement with the newer kernels. Would it be possible for you to also attach the output of 'lspci --vvnn' ? Also just a note that I'm keeping this report open against the actiThanks.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Hi Peteris,

Sorry for the delayed response. It sounds like you are seeing a small bit of improvement with the newer kernels. Would it be possible for you to also attach the output of 'lspci --vvnn' ? Also just a note, that I'm keeping this report open against the actively developed kernel but against linux-source-2.6.22 this will be closed. Thanks.

[Pēteris Krišjānis (pecisk-gmail)]

Hi Leann,

Finally got myself to test Hardy again against my computer. Unfortunately nothing changes. However, I produced shot with photo cam (as it is kernel messages which are hard to dump to text file) to see reset and I/O messages in console while I am trying to copy stuff from one directory to another. I tried to copy to the same disk and to different one - the same problems.

I am thinking that it is IRQ conflict. I will remove additional SATA card and try then again. If it will work, I will know source of problem.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Hi Peteris,

Care to try booting with the "all_generic_ide" boot option to see if it helps? Thanks.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

The Ubuntu Kernel Team is planning to move to the 2.6.27 kernel for the upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10 release. As a result, the kernel team would appreciate it if you could please test this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. There are one of two ways you should be able to test:

1) If you are comfortable installing packages on your own, the linux-image-2.6.27-* package is currently available for you to install and test.

--or--

2) The upcoming Alpha5 for Intrepid Ibex 8.10 will contain this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. Alpha5 is set to be released Thursday Sept 4. Please watch http://www.ubuntu.com/testing for Alpha5 to be announced. You should then be able to test via a LiveCD.

Please let us know immediately if this newer 2.6.27 kernel resolves the bug reported here or if the issue remains. More importantly, please open a new bug report for each new bug/regression introduced by the 2.6.27 kernel and tag the bug report with 'linux-2.6.27'. Also, please specifically note if the issue does or does not appear in the 2.6.26 kernel. Thanks again, we really appreicate your help and feedback.

[Pēteris Krišjānis (pecisk-gmail)]

Hi, I tried this controler again with Intrepid Ibex Daily Live CD, kernel:
Linux ubuntu 2.6.27-2-generic #1 SMP Thu Aug 28 17:20:02 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

Short answer is - pata_hpt73x doesn't see hard disk anymore at all. At boot, SATA RAID message shows hard disk is found, and old distro still sees it. I attach dmesg and lspci --vvnn for additional information.

[Pēteris Krišjānis (pecisk-gmail)]

Forgot to mention that IDE drivers are obsoleted in this version and now pata drivers takes over.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Per a decision made by the Ubuntu Kernel Team, bugs will longer be assigned to the ubuntu-kernel-team in Launchpad as part of the bug triage process. The ubuntu-kernel-team is being unassigned from this bug report. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeamBugPolicies for more information. Thanks.

[Pēteris Krišjānis (pecisk-gmail)]

If someone still "listens" to this bug - short resume of current situation:
* Starting somewhere with Feisty Linux kernel started to remove old IDE drivers and replaced them with PATA drivers (nice way to introduce regressions, as it seems);
* Alan Cox (re)wrote HighPoint group of drivers during that process, including shiny new one pata_hpt37x;
* In result, new driver can't find hard disks connected to lot of controllers, web is full of such reports for some two years;
* It feels like no one cares, because you should use better [tm] SATA controllers instead of this broken cruft (partly I agree);

Returning to technical side of problem, with boring and extensive testing I have come to conclusion that problem is wrongly detected bus speed. New pata_hpt37x gives me 66Hz for my controller (details see in lspci output attached above), but Dapper, which has last working version of old IDE driver, indicates it uses 33Hz bus speed. As it's mentioned in this b.k.o bug report (http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7703), controllers shouldn't really use 66 Hz bus speed if there is another controllers down the road on PCI bus.

Something is broken within detection of bus speed. I will propably ping upstream (Alan Cox) myself, but if someone can help me with getting this fixed - you are welcome.

[Andy Whitcroft (apw)]

On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 01:21:01AM -0000, Peteris Krisjanis wrote:

> Something is broken within detection of bus speed. I will propably ping
> upstream (Alan Cox) myself, but if someone can help me with getting this
> fixed - you are welcome.

Communicating with Alan Cox will likely help this move forward the most.
He is normally responsive, and likely simply does not have the specific
hardware you are having issues with.

Also filing an upstream bug in the kernel bugzilla and linking it to the
Ubuntu bug would likely get it more attention from the mainstream
community.

[Amit Kucheria (amitk)]

Did you report this bug upstream? Any resolution? Please let us know.

If this still an issue with the latest pre-release of Jaunty 9.04? Refer to http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/jaunty/beta.

[kernel-janitor (kernel-janitor)]

This bug report was marked as Incomplete and has not had any updated comments for quite some time. As a result this bug is being closed. Please reopen if this is still an issue in the current Ubuntu release http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download . Also, please be sure to provide any requested information that may have been missing. To reopen the bug, click on the current status under the Status column and change the status back to "New". Thanks.

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