# Gentoo can't handle my 80GB maxtor!

## athlonkmf

Oh my god.

I've spend the past four days on this problem, but let's start at the beginning.

Four days agao, i've discovered, that my freshly installed Gentoo-server, (upgraded from Redhat7.2) had problems with my 80GB maxtor drive. I've some rar-files, and when unrarring them, there were CRC-errors on 90% of them.

At first I thought it was a defective harddrive. So I've spend two days on checking it with the maxtor diagnostic tool, Maxblast. The diagnostic was that the drive is working great.

Then maybe there's something wrong with the upgrade from redhat-> gentoo. Maybe some problems at the permission front and thus I've fdisked mk2efs -j it from scratch of on.

Still problems.

So, yesterdaynight, i've installed the harddisk on my windows_PC and using it as Fat32. It works great there....

Since it 1: worked great with Redhat on my server, 2: works great with my w2k-workstation, 3: the diagnosticprogram says it's fine.

And thus.. the horrifying conclusion had come to mind... Gentoo messed it up.

It was and is installed on a Promise U66-controller card on my workstation AND server.

But gentoo is working good with the other drives that were installed on that same controller, so it can't be that gentoo has issues with that controller.

So.... could it be that Gentoo has issues with a 80GB drive? And is there any way to repair this? Once i've tasted gentoo, i don't want to go back to redhat.....

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## lx

Do you have problems copying the files around make a copy and do md5sum / diff to check if both are the identical. If so then your problem is with rar. Did you used strange build flags (-fomit-frame-pointer), compile the rar package using march=686 and -O2 and check if the problems resides, well if the problem is with rar only.

Further more Not Gentoo but the used kernel. Try to find out if promise is correctly configured. You could also try the redhat kernel if you like.

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## Safrax

Well I'm assuming that no other files are getting corrupted.  So that means that rar is the culprit.  I seriously doubt that file corruption would happen only to specific file types if it was a kernel problem or hardware problem.

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## athlonkmf

 *Safrax wrote:*   

> Well I'm assuming that no other files are getting corrupted.  So that means that rar is the culprit.  I seriously doubt that file corruption would happen only to specific file types if it was a kernel problem or hardware problem.

 

No, it's not only the rar-files that had the problems. It's just htat when I unrrarred them, that I've discovered the problem. Divx-movies are corrupted, files cannot be copied becuase of I/O-problems.

I've spend a lot of time to back up the stuff... had to use ftp to copy the partial files....

Now, the 80GB hdd and controller are sitting in my windows workstation, and I've tested it a lot and it seems to work perfectly.

There were no problems with other drives on that same controller under Gentoo. 

But just to be sure, I'll be reinstalling everything this weekend and see what happens. But before I do that, should I just use vanilla this time or still gentoo-sources. I DID emerged gentoo-sources with promise-support.

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## arkane

considering I've used a 120 gig western digital under Gentoo without a problem, I know it's not a problem with the drive size.

It sounds like something specific to the promise controller... might be the driver.

not sure how to fix it, but at least it's narrowed down.

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## chadh

What kernel are you using.  Try a vanilla one or the redhat kernel.

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## pjp

I've recently installed an 80G Maxtor drive with a Promise controller.  Works like a charm.

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## athlonkmf

 *kanuslupus wrote:*   

> I've recently installed an 80G Maxtor drive with a Promise controller.  Works like a charm.

 

Which kernel have you compiled to do this? 

And can you tell me what options you've buildin the kernel? Maybe I've forgotten something important.....

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## athlonkmf

 *chadh wrote:*   

> What kernel are you using.  Try a vanilla one or the redhat kernel.

 

I'm going to upgrade my server today, so I'm going to reinstall everything.

I think this time I'll place my bet for Vanilla. (As I recall, Redhat7.2 used Vanilla too right?)

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## mark

I have an 80 gb maxtor.  I've been running it for about 2/3 months under gentoo with no probs

I am currently using gentoo-sources-r5.  my /boot is ext3.  The rest xfs

I also have a maxtor 5400 120gb which I have experiment with video capture on xfs without probs.

Mark

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## pjp

 *athlonkmf wrote:*   

>  *kanuslupus wrote:*   I've recently installed an 80G Maxtor drive with a Promise controller.  Works like a charm. 
> 
> Which kernel have you compiled to do this? 
> 
> And can you tell me what options you've buildin the kernel? Maybe I've forgotten something important.....

 

```
$ uname -r

2.4.19-r1
```

I'm pretty sure all I added in the kernel was Promise support.  Someone else had a similar problem though.

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## delta407

 *athlonkmf wrote:*   

> I think this time I'll place my bet for Vanilla. (As I recall, Redhat7.2 used Vanilla too right?)

 

No, RedHat heavily patches and tests their kernels (7.2, IIRC, uses 2.4.9) to make sure they can support them with actuall people. Support costs money, you know, so RedHat wants the kernels solid -- thus, they build them to work on the most possible systems and to be a stable as possible. So, in short, RedHat does not use vanilla sources.

But, I must say that I've had absolutely no problems with 2.4.18 in the past few months  :Smile: 

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## athlonkmf

After a lot of reinstalling, checking, testing, I've finally found the problem.

It's the 2.4.19 kernel. I've used the Xfs-2.4.18 kernel and everything's working fine for now. so....

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## c_kuzmanic

Hmm strange, I use that drive (maxtor 80 GB - 540DX) with Kernel 2.14_pre9 and never had a problem.

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## athlonkmf

 *c_kuzmanic wrote:*   

> Hmm strange, I use that drive (maxtor 80 GB - 540DX) with Kernel 2.14_pre9 and never had a problem.

 

I think it's the drive+controllercombo that giving me problems.

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## pjp

 *athlonkmf wrote:*   

> After a lot of reinstalling, checking, testing, I've finally found the problem.
> 
> It's the 2.4.19 kernel. I've used the Xfs-2.4.18 kernel and everything's working fine for now. so....

 I use 2.4.19 also, but without problems.  I'm guessing you are using a different 'r' number.  What does uname -r tell you?

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## athlonkmf

 *kanuslupus wrote:*   

>  *athlonkmf wrote:*   After a lot of reinstalling, checking, testing, I've finally found the problem.
> 
> It's the 2.4.19 kernel. I've used the Xfs-2.4.18 kernel and everything's working fine for now. so.... I use 2.4.19 also, but without problems.  I'm guessing you are using a different 'r' number.  What does uname -r tell you?

 

now I'm using 2.4.18-xfs and it's working fine.

It was 2.4.19-r7 that was causing that pain in my ass.

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