[TriLUG] Fwd: Organize a Debian Birthday party in your city

Alan Porter porter at trilug.org
Wed Aug 15 08:42:40 EDT 2012


Best I can tell, I started a few months after Tom, in the Summer of 1992.

Here's a posting that I made to comp.os.linux, asking for help with
a hard disk problem.  Linus responded with a fix.

Alan




From: torvalds at klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux
Subject: Re: HD interrupts and IDE
Date: 30 Aug 92 22:16:12 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki

In article <1992Aug30.161030.5898 at ncsu.edu> big at garfield.catt.ncsu.edu 
(Alan Porter) writes:
 >
 >
 >I have been getting the infamous "Unexpected HD interrupt" messages
 >whenever I do anything that requires a lot of disk activity (like tar,
 >or worse yet, rebuilding the kernel).
 >
 >Even more annoying, I also get the "HD timeout", the 4 second wait, and
 >then the "HD-controller reset".
 >
 >First, my system:
 >386-40, IDE drive (KLOC KL3120, 115 MB), 4 MB RAM, 60 MB Minix FS, 5 
MB swap.

This is "normal" for kalok drives: they give these unexpected interrupts
for some unfathomable reason.  I actually have a OEM manual for kalok
drives (thanks to whoever got it to me), but it doesn't mention this
kind of behaviour, so I guess it's a "undocumented feature", ie bug.

The problem can be at least partly fixed by defining HD_DELAY in hd.c to
something other than 0 - try different values until it disappears
(starting with 1000 or something like that).  It should get rid of at
least most of the errors, as the problem seems to be that the drive
isn't ready to accept a new command even though it indicates it is in
the status register.

         Linus







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