# udev & HDD LED

## merrimanjd

Hi,

For the past few kernel versions (at least back to 2.6.9), whenever I tried switching from devfs to udev, everything would work fine,

except my hard drive LED would stay on constantly. However, there was no slowdown and no audible r/w noises. It appeared the

drive was not really in use, and the light just stayed on for some reason. During bootup, the light would flicker on and off, like normal, but once the login prompt came up it'd stay on. I was always too lazy to try to figure it out, and just went back to devfs, but now that it apparently is finally removed, I'd like to figure this out. I've got two EIDE drives, and the same thing also happened when I just had one in there.

Here's some dmesg output, if any other info would help let me know:

```
jesse@ricercar[0,45] $ dmesg | grep -i hda

    ide0: BM-DMA at 0xe400-0xe407, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA

hda: WDC WD1600JB-00GVA0, ATA DISK drive

hda: max request size: 1024KiB

hda: 312581808 sectors (160041 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=19457/255/63

hda: cache flushes supported

 hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4

ReiserFS: hda3: found reiserfs format "3.6" with standard journal

ReiserFS: hda3: using ordered data mode

ReiserFS: hda3: journal params: device hda3, size 8192, journal first block 18, max trans len 1024, max batch 900, max commit age 30, max trans age 30

ReiserFS: hda3: checking transaction log (hda3)

ReiserFS: hda3: Using r5 hash to sort names

Adding 506036k swap on /dev/hda2.  Priority:-1 extents:1 across:506036k

ReiserFS: hda4: found reiserfs format "3.6" with standard journal

ReiserFS: hda4: using ordered data mode

ReiserFS: hda4: journal params: device hda4, size 8192, journal first block 18, max trans len 1024, max batch 900, max commit age 30, max trans age 30

ReiserFS: hda4: checking transaction log (hda4)

ReiserFS: hda4: Using r5 hash to sort names

```

```
jesse@ricercar[0,46] $ dmesg | grep -i hdb

    ide0: BM-DMA at 0xe400-0xe407, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA

hdb: WDC WD400EB-00CPF0, ATA DISK drive

hdb: max request size: 128KiB

hdb: 78165360 sectors (40020 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63

hdb: cache flushes not supported

 hdb: hdb1 hdb4 < hdb5 hdb6 hdb7 hdb8 >

ReiserFS: hdb8: found reiserfs format "3.6" with standard journal

ReiserFS: hdb8: using ordered data mode

ReiserFS: hdb8: journal params: device hdb8, size 8192, journal first block 18, max trans len 1024, max batch 900, max commit age 30, max trans age 30

ReiserFS: hdb8: checking transaction log (hdb8)

ReiserFS: hdb8: Using r5 hash to sort names

```

```
jesse@ricercar[0,47] $ dmesg | grep -i ide

Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=Gentoo ro root=303 video=vesa:ywrap,mtrr gentoo=nodevfs

CPU: After generic identify, caps: 0383fbff c1c3fbff 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000

CPU: After vendor identify, caps: 0383fbff c1c3fbff 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000

Boot video device is 0000:01:00.0

eth0:  Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8100B/8139D'

Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2

ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx

VP_IDE: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:00:11.1

VP_IDE: chipset revision 6

VP_IDE: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later

VP_IDE: VIA vt8235 (rev 00) IDE UDMA133 controller on pci0000:00:11.1

    ide0: BM-DMA at 0xe400-0xe407, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA

    ide1: BM-DMA at 0xe408-0xe40f, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:pio

Probing IDE interface ide0...

ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14

Probing IDE interface ide1...

hdc: CD-RW IDE4012, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive

ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15

```

Update: I've noticed that if I reboot, the LED stays on even up through LILO (!), and will stay on until I boot up with devfs.

--Jesse

----------

## davidgurvich

How much ram do you have?

The only item I see is that you have a swap partition of 506036k.

If you have half the ram, linux might be doing constant swapping.

vmstat would tell you if that is going on.  I don't remember the options right now.

----------

## merrimanjd

352 megs. I doubt its swapping, since like I said there is no slowdown, and the LED stays on right up through LILO after a reboot.

----------

## Moloch

I don't think there is anyway for any software to have an affect on LED lights if nothing is accessing the hard drive. It most likely on the hardware level. The fact that you see the light on constantly before lilo confirms this. 

Thinks to check would be: Proper jumper configuration on all drives even ones that work. Check the connecter from your case to motherboard that deals with lights, power button, etc. You may need to double check with your motherboard manual. Make sure all your IDE cables are firmly seated. CDROM drives affect the LED lights and if you haven't used it sense this problem, you might not even know if it's working or not.

----------

## merrimanjd

I just checked all cables, CD drive, etc, and I still have the same result. Boot up with devfs, light acts normal; boot up with udev, light stays on.

----------

## merrimanjd

Another interesting thing: if I reboot after booting with udev, and go into BIOS setup, the light goes off. However, once I exit that, the light comes right back on, and stays on, just before going to LILO.

----------

## Moloch

Oops, I missed where you said it works normally with devfs.

Well, I'm not very sure here. There's got to be something continually accessing one of your drives. Strange that it doesn't affect performance. My only thought is maybe dbus or hal could be interacting with udev in a strange way. If you have them installed and running maybe try stopping dbus which should stop hal. If you aren't running them. I don't have any other ideas at the moment. Sorry.

----------

## merrimanjd

Nope, not running dbus or hal.

----------

## Moloch

While I'm stumped, more information may help.

Kernel version are you running and whether it is gentoo-sources or not.

udev version.

The full output of your dmesg may help as well.

----------

## bakaohki

Are you sure this is an issue with the OS? Try booting off different live cd-s, like Knoppix and friends, depending on the version of udev and their kernel. Also hdparm tuning maybe a problem here... but that's weird.

----------

## merrimanjd

I tried the Gentoo 2005.1 and Kubuntu 5.10 live CD's, both of which use udev (though I haven't looked up the versions), and with both of them the light correctly goes off.

I've tried gentoo-sources 2.6.14-r2, 2.6.12-r10, and a few others going back at least to 2.6.9. I'm currently using udev version 070-r1.

I'll try messing with hdparm, and posting a full dmesg, later today.

----------

## merrimanjd

Here's my full dmesg:

```
Linux version 2.6.14-gentoo-r2 (root@ricercar) (gcc version 3.3.6 (Gentoo 3.3.6, ssp-3.3.6-1.0, pie-8.7.8)) #1 PREEMPT Tue Nov 15 15:28:17 EST 2005

BIOS-provided physical RAM map:

 BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)

 BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)

 BIOS-e820: 00000000000f0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)

 BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 0000000015ff0000 (usable)

 BIOS-e820: 0000000015ff0000 - 0000000015ff3000 (ACPI NVS)

 BIOS-e820: 0000000015ff3000 - 0000000016000000 (ACPI data)

 BIOS-e820: 00000000fec00000 - 00000000fec01000 (reserved)

 BIOS-e820: 00000000fee00000 - 00000000fee01000 (reserved)

 BIOS-e820: 00000000ffff0000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)

351MB LOWMEM available.

found SMP MP-table at 000f56c0

On node 0 totalpages: 90096

  DMA zone: 4096 pages, LIFO batch:1

  Normal zone: 86000 pages, LIFO batch:31

  HighMem zone: 0 pages, LIFO batch:1

DMI 2.3 present.

ACPI: RSDP (v000 FIC                                   ) @ 0x000f7630

ACPI: RSDT (v001 FIC    AM37     0x42302e31 AWRD 0x00000000) @ 0x15ff3000

ACPI: FADT (v001 FIC    AM37     0x42302e31 AWRD 0x00000000) @ 0x15ff3040

ACPI: MADT (v001 FIC    AM37     0x42302e31 AWRD 0x00000000) @ 0x15ff6a00

ACPI: DSDT (v001 FIC    AWRDACPI 0x00001000 MSFT 0x0100000d) @ 0x00000000

ACPI: Local APIC address 0xfee00000

ACPI: LAPIC (acpi_id[0x00] lapic_id[0x00] enabled)

Processor #0 6:6 APIC version 16

Using ACPI for processor (LAPIC) configuration information

Intel MultiProcessor Specification v1.4

    Virtual Wire compatibility mode.

OEM ID: OEM00000 Product ID: PROD00000000 APIC at: 0xFEE00000

I/O APIC #2 Version 17 at 0xFEC00000.

Enabling APIC mode:  Flat.  Using 1 I/O APICs

Processors: 1

Allocating PCI resources starting at 20000000 (gap: 16000000:e8c00000)

Built 1 zonelists

Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=Gentoo ro root=303 video=vesa:ywrap,mtrr gentoo=nodevfs

mapped APIC to ffffd000 (fee00000)

Initializing CPU#0

PID hash table entries: 2048 (order: 11, 32768 bytes)

Detected 1391.332 MHz processor.

Using tsc for high-res timesource

Console: colour dummy device 80x25

Dentry cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)

Inode-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)

Memory: 352888k/360384k available (2581k kernel code, 6944k reserved, 739k data, 176k init, 0k highmem)

Checking if this processor honours the WP bit even in supervisor mode... Ok.

Calibrating delay using timer specific routine.. 2787.17 BogoMIPS (lpj=5574343)

Mount-cache hash table entries: 512

CPU: After generic identify, caps: 0383fbff c1c3fbff 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000

CPU: After vendor identify, caps: 0383fbff c1c3fbff 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000

CPU: L1 I Cache: 64K (64 bytes/line), D cache 64K (64 bytes/line)

CPU: L2 Cache: 256K (64 bytes/line)

CPU: After all inits, caps: 0383fbff c1c3fbff 00000000 00000020 00000000 00000000 00000000

Intel machine check architecture supported.

Intel machine check reporting enabled on CPU#0.

mtrr: v2.0 (20020519)

CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1600+ stepping 02

Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.

Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.

Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.

ACPI: setting ELCR to 0200 (from 0e28)

NET: Registered protocol family 16

ACPI: bus type pci registered

PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfb4d0, last bus=1

PCI: Using configuration type 1

ACPI: Subsystem revision 20050902

ACPI: Interpreter enabled

ACPI: Using PIC for interrupt routing

ACPI: PCI Root Bridge [PCI0] (0000:00)

PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)

ACPI: Assume root bridge [\_SB_.PCI0] bus is 0

PCI quirk: region 4000-407f claimed by vt8235 PM

PCI quirk: region 5000-500f claimed by vt8235 SMB

Boot video device is 0000:01:00.0

ACPI: PCI Interrupt Routing Table [\_SB_.PCI0._PRT]

ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 10 *11 12 14 15)

ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKB] (IRQs 1 *3 4 5 6 7 10 11 12 14 15)

ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKC] (IRQs 1 3 4 5 6 7 *10 11 12 14 15)

ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKD] (IRQs 1 3 4 *5 6 7 10 11 12 14 15)

ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [ALKA] (IRQs 20) *0, disabled.

ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [ALKB] (IRQs 21) *0, disabled.

ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [ALKC] (IRQs 22) *0, disabled.

ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [ALKD] (IRQs 23) *0, disabled.

Linux Plug and Play Support v0.97 (c) Adam Belay

SCSI subsystem initialized

usbcore: registered new driver usbfs

usbcore: registered new driver hub

PCI: Using ACPI for IRQ routing

PCI: If a device doesn't work, try "pci=routeirq".  If it helps, post a report

spurious 8259A interrupt: IRQ7.

PCI: Bridge: 0000:00:01.0

  IO window: disabled.

  MEM window: ec000000-ec0fffff

  PREFETCH window: e0000000-e7ffffff

PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:01.0 to 64

Machine check exception polling timer started.

vesafb: framebuffer at 0xe0000000, mapped to 0xd6880000, using 3072k, total 31680k

vesafb: mode is 1024x768x16, linelength=2048, pages=19

vesafb: protected mode interface info at c000:6f20

vesafb: scrolling: redraw

vesafb: Truecolor: size=0:5:6:5, shift=0:11:5:0

vesafb: Mode is VGA compatible

Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 128x48

fb0: VESA VGA frame buffer device

vga16fb: initializing

vga16fb: mapped to 0xc00a0000

fb1: VGA16 VGA frame buffer device

PNP: No PS/2 controller found. Probing ports directly.

serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12

serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1

Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ 4 ports, IRQ sharing disabled

ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A

ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKA] enabled at IRQ 11

PCI: setting IRQ 11 as level-triggered

ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:08.0[A] -> Link [LNKA] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11

ttyS1 at I/O 0xd028 (irq = 11) is a 8250

ttyS2 at I/O 0xd040 (irq = 11) is a 8250

ttyS3 at I/O 0xd050 (irq = 11) is a 8250

Couldn't register serial port 0000:00:08.0: -28

mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice

io scheduler noop registered

io scheduler anticipatory registered

io scheduler deadline registered

io scheduler cfq registered

Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M

FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077

RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size 1024 blocksize

input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard on isa0060/serio0

loop: loaded (max 8 devices)

PPP generic driver version 2.4.2

PPP Deflate Compression module registered

PPP BSD Compression module registered

8139too Fast Ethernet driver 0.9.27

ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKC] enabled at IRQ 10

PCI: setting IRQ 10 as level-triggered

ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:0b.0[A] -> Link [LNKC] -> GSI 10 (level, low) -> IRQ 10

eth0: RealTek RTL8139 at 0xd6802000, 00:40:ca:37:e9:61, IRQ 10

eth0:  Identified 8139 chip type 'RTL-8100B/8139D'

Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2

ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx

VP_IDE: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:00:11.1

ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:11.1[A] -> Link [LNKA] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11

PCI: Via IRQ fixup for 0000:00:11.1, from 255 to 11

VP_IDE: chipset revision 6

VP_IDE: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later

VP_IDE: VIA vt8235 (rev 00) IDE UDMA133 controller on pci0000:00:11.1

    ide0: BM-DMA at 0xe400-0xe407, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA

    ide1: BM-DMA at 0xe408-0xe40f, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:pio

Probing IDE interface ide0...

input: ImPS/2 Generic Wheel Mouse on isa0060/serio1

hda: WDC WD1600JB-00GVA0, ATA DISK drive

hdb: WDC WD400EB-00CPF0, ATA DISK drive

ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14

Probing IDE interface ide1...

hdc: CD-RW IDE4012, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive

ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15

hda: max request size: 1024KiB

hda: 312581808 sectors (160041 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=19457/255/63

hda: cache flushes supported

 hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4

hdb: max request size: 128KiB

hdb: 78165360 sectors (40020 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63

hdb: cache flushes not supported

 hdb: hdb1 hdb4 < hdb5 hdb6 hdb7 hdb8 >

libata version 1.12 loaded.

USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v2.3

ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:10.0[A] -> Link [LNKA] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11

uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.0: UHCI Host Controller

uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1

uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.0: irq 11, io base 0x0000d800

hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found

hub 1-0:1.0: 2 ports detected

ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKB] enabled at IRQ 3

PCI: setting IRQ 3 as level-triggered

ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:10.1[B] -> Link [LNKB] -> GSI 3 (level, low) -> IRQ 3

uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.1: UHCI Host Controller

uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2

uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.1: irq 3, io base 0x0000dc00

hub 2-0:1.0: USB hub found

hub 2-0:1.0: 2 ports detected

ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:10.2[C] -> Link [LNKC] -> GSI 10 (level, low) -> IRQ 10

uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.2: UHCI Host Controller

uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.2: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3

uhci_hcd 0000:00:10.2: irq 10, io base 0x0000e000

hub 3-0:1.0: USB hub found

hub 3-0:1.0: 2 ports detected

Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.10rc1 (Mon Sep 12 08:13:09 2005 UTC).

via82xx: Assuming DXS channels with 48k fixed sample rate.

         Please try dxs_support=5 option

         and report if it works on your machine.

         For more details, read ALSA-Configuration.txt.

ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:11.5[C] -> Link [LNKC] -> GSI 10 (level, low) -> IRQ 10

PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:11.5 to 64

ALSA device list:

  #0: VIA 8235 with ALC202 at 0xe800, irq 10

NET: Registered protocol family 2

IP route cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)

TCP established hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)

TCP bind hash table entries: 16384 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)

TCP: Hash tables configured (established 16384 bind 16384)

TCP reno registered

TCP bic registered

Using IPI Shortcut mode

ReiserFS: hda3: found reiserfs format "3.6" with standard journal

ReiserFS: hda3: using ordered data mode

ReiserFS: hda3: journal params: device hda3, size 8192, journal first block 18, max trans len 1024, max batch 900, max commit age 30, max trans age 30

ReiserFS: hda3: checking transaction log (hda3)

ReiserFS: hda3: Using r5 hash to sort names

VFS: Mounted root (reiserfs filesystem) readonly.

Freeing unused kernel memory: 176k freed

NET: Registered protocol family 1

Adding 506036k swap on /dev/hda2.  Priority:-1 extents:1 across:506036k

Linux agpgart interface v0.101 (c) Dave Jones

agpgart: Detected VIA PM266/KM266 chipset

agpgart: AGP aperture is 64M @ 0xe8000000

[drm] Initialized drm 1.0.0 20040925

ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:01:00.0[A] -> Link [LNKA] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11

mtrr: 0xe0000000,0x8000000 overlaps existing 0xe0000000,0x1000000

mtrr: 0xe0000000,0x2000000 overlaps existing 0xe0000000,0x1000000

mtrr: base(0xe2000000) is not aligned on a size(0x5000000) boundary

[drm] Initialized savage 2.4.1 20050313 on minor 0: 

ACPI: CPU0 (power states: C1[C1] C2[C2])

ACPI: Processor [CPU0] (supports 2 throttling states)

ACPI: Thermal Zone [THRM] (40 C)

ReiserFS: hda4: found reiserfs format "3.6" with standard journal

ReiserFS: hda4: using ordered data mode

ReiserFS: hda4: journal params: device hda4, size 8192, journal first block 18, max trans len 1024, max batch 900, max commit age 30, max trans age 30

ReiserFS: hda4: checking transaction log (hda4)

ReiserFS: hda4: Using r5 hash to sort names

NTFS driver 2.1.24 [Flags: R/O MODULE].

NTFS volume version 3.1.

ReiserFS: hdb8: found reiserfs format "3.6" with standard journal

ReiserFS: hdb8: using ordered data mode

ReiserFS: hdb8: journal params: device hdb8, size 8192, journal first block 18, max trans len 1024, max batch 900, max commit age 30, max trans age 30

ReiserFS: hdb8: checking transaction log (hdb8)

ReiserFS: hdb8: Using r5 hash to sort names

ACPI: PCI Interrupt Link [LNKD] enabled at IRQ 5

PCI: setting IRQ 5 as level-triggered

ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:10.3[D] -> Link [LNKD] -> GSI 5 (level, low) -> IRQ 5

ehci_hcd 0000:00:10.3: EHCI Host Controller

ehci_hcd 0000:00:10.3: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 4

ehci_hcd 0000:00:10.3: irq 5, io mem 0xec112000

ehci_hcd 0000:00:10.3: USB 2.0 initialized, EHCI 1.00, driver 10 Dec 2004

hub 4-0:1.0: USB hub found

hub 4-0:1.0: 6 ports detected

ip_tables: (C) 2000-2002 Netfilter core team

ip_conntrack version 2.3 (2815 buckets, 22520 max) - 216 bytes per conntrack

NET: Registered protocol family 17

eth0: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex, lpa 0x41E1

Inbound IN=eth0 OUT= MAC=00:40:ca:37:e9:61:00:06:28:25:c9:93:08:00 SRC=221.5.251.243 DST=67.50.142.78 LEN=499 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=43 ID=0 DF PROTO=UDP SPT=56489 DPT=1026 LEN=479 
```

----------

## merrimanjd

And... messing around with hdparm wasn't able to fix it either.

----------

## Moloch

I'm running the same version of udev. A couple things I did notice in the dmesg output was first you have Symmetric multi-processing support enabled and Local APIC support on uniprocessors. APIC has personally given me trouble and is only required by SMP which as far as I could tell you have only one processor. So I would recommend taking these options out of your kernel and recompile.

Whether this fixes your problem. I still have no clue. Hopefully by working at it enough, we'll figure it out.

----------

## merrimanjd

Alright, switched those off, but it didn't make a difference. I'll be gone for the next week or so, though, so I won't be able to try anything else right away..

----------

## merrimanjd

*bump* Any other ideas?

----------

## dsd

it is extremely unlikely that udev is causing this. have you tried comparing your devfs kernel with the *exact* *same* kernel but with udev?

----------

## fikiz

it could be a good idea to check booting a different system... try with a live distribution, Gentoo live cd of even a Windows installation cd. If the problem disappear, you know it is surely something in your gentoo system.

----------

## merrimanjd

dsd:

I just compiled two 2.6.12-r10 kernels, both exactly the same except for devfs/udev; with udev the light stays on, while with devfs the light goes off.

fikiz:

As I said in an above comment, I already tried a few live CD's, and with none of them did the issue show up.

----------

## merrimanjd

Just tried gentoo-sources-2.6.14-r4, and still the problem persists...

----------

## dsd

do you have multipath-tools installed? there was a bug in version 0.4.5 that might cause something like this

----------

## merrimanjd

Nope, multipath-tools is not installed.

----------

## dsd

in /etc/udev/rules.d/50-udev.rules you will see:

RUN+="/sbin/udev_run_devd"

comment out that line by prefixing it with a '#'

also check which other files you have in /etc/udev/rules.d and maybe try moving them out of that directory (but leave 50-udev.rules in place)

----------

## merrimanjd

Ok, tried that, but no effect..

----------

## merrimanjd

Bump, and I tried gentoo-sources-2.6.14-r5, but no fix yet..

----------

## merrimanjd

Its been over a month since I last bumped this thread, so lets see if there's anyone who can figure this out now..

The problem is still there with gentoo-sources-2.6.15-r1 and udev-079-r1.

----------

## dsd

you could try writing to the linux-hotplug list about it: linux-hotplug-devel@lists.sourceforge.net

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## merrimanjd

Ok, did just that; thanks for the link dsd. I'll try to keep this thread and the hotplug-devel thread somewhat in sync with each other.

So far the only development has been the discovery that the light will also stay on with a static /dev, so its not in fact completely a udev problem.

----------

## radex

I have the same problem on an old IBM ThinkPad 240 laptop (Celeron 400MHz), fresh gentoo install with 40GB drive. What is weird I did all compilation on fast desktop thru 2.5" IDE adapter and hdd led was on even during the install stage. Just after bringing this new HDD I followed this ext3 guide

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-305871-start-0-postdays-0-postorder-asc-highlight-ext3+e2fsck+optimize+optimize.html

boot is ext2, root is ext3. I don't really know if it has anything to do with led activity. Situation is exactly same as merrimanjd described, everything works fine : reading/writing etc...

EDIT: Bios is OK, Grub is OK. During reading/writing led acts fine, once it stops reading led is off during next few seconds then it goes on and stays on until hda reads/writes data again. Vanilla 2.6.15 kernel

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## merrimanjd

Well its been a while, but I finally figured this one out. Strangely it ended up being because of a lack of IDE/ATAPI CDROM support. After modprobe'ing ide-cd, the LED began acting correctly. Compiling it into the kernel also works.

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