linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 1/1] filesystem: Disk Errors at boot-time caused by probe of partitions

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Date:	Thu, 01 Feb 2007 14:12:42 -0500
From:	Phillip Susi <psusi@....rr.com>
To:	TJ <linux@...orld.net>
CC:	Robert Hancock <hancockr@...w.ca>,
	linux-kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	OGAWA Hirofumi <hirofumi@...l.parknet.co.jp>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/1] filesystem: Disk Errors at boot-time caused by probe
 of partitions

I think you may be barking up the wrong tree because IIRC, these 
requests for data beyond the end of the disk never make it to the drive; 
the kernel fails them in the block layer.  There was a patch a while 
back to fix the partition detection code to NOT request sectors beyond 
the end of the disk, but I don't think it was ever merged.

In any case, if you are sure the requests are making it to the drive and 
causing damage, I hope you give Maxtor and IBM a sound thrashing for 
using retarded firmware.

TJ wrote:
> Hi Robert,
> 
> Yes, I'd have expected that too. I'm particularly surprised the
> drive-logic doesn't refuse to move the heads and just report the failure
> based on the LBA value.
> 
> These are Maxtor drives, but its also happened with IBM drives in
> another system with similar configuration, as a test.
> 
> During the bug-hunt (which started end of December) I built about 100
> kernels trying to track down the root cause, and therefore went through
> many reboot cycles.
> 
> Several times the drives were 'knocked out' and would refuse to
> initialise during POST. The only remedy was to leave the system powered
> down for a while - the rest seemed to do them good.
> 
> The difficulty I had in debugging was the errors are generated on the
> work-queue and interrupt handling side, and it was extremely difficult
> to pin-point the root cause because the symptoms (drive seek errors)
> occur well after the partition tables have been scanned, and also repeat
> themselves several times during system start-up.

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