Re: [9fans] fossil caching venti errors

[erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net>]

On Sat Mar 28 06:54:35 EDT 2009, forsyth@terzarima.net wrote:
> i've seen that just recently, but thought it might have been
> a failing (very old) drive, or a power failure beyond the endurance of the UPS.
> if neither of those are true in your case, it might be worth a deeper look.
> i also found there is a persistent problem that `check fix' won't fix.
> (since it's my principal file server at home, i can't easily investigate more
> until i can transfer the service to a new drive, leaving the old drive
> for experiment.)

i hope this is useful information, but i fear it might not be.

if the very old disk in question is a scsi disk, disk/smart in my
contrib area should be gentle enough to run on a live server
with any kernel.

if the very old disk in question is an ata disk, disk/smart requires
the sd changes in my contrib area to run raw ata commands
like smart return status.  it is also should be gentle enough to run
on a live server.

unfortunately, disk/smart is not smart enough to access ata
general purpose logging information (gpl), yet.  manufacturer
diagnostic tools are still helpful here but require booting into
dos.

by the way, i think there are a number of interesting gsoc projects
related to devsd and ata.  for example, a devsd device that adds
checksumming to another devsd device.  gpl support could be
done entirely outside the kernel.

- erik