Kernel Panics and SATA Errors: ICH7 & WD drives

[Thorne Lawler]

Hi folks!

I have this new Shuttle SD31p 'barebone' box which I have been 
attempting for three weeks now to build into a Dapper AMD64 server box. 
My ongoing problems have all stemmed from the Intel ICH7 SATA 
controller, or from some other aspect of the SATA drive system.

Yesterday I was getting a repeated error like this:
ata1: status=0x50 { DriveReady SeekComplete }

followed by a kernel panic:
Kernel panic - not syncing: Aiee, killing interrupt handler

Obviously there was a lot more to it than these snippets, but I am 
forced to copy messages down by hand since the system typically doesn't 
stay up for long enough to copy anything to a viable machine.

Today the system refuses to boot altogether, producing a steady stream 
of these:
ata1: command 0x35 timeout, stat 0xd0 host_stat 0x61
ata1: translated ATA stat/err 0xd0/00 to SCSI SK/ASC/ASCQ 0xb/47/00

So far I have updated to the latest available bios from Shuttle, and 
experimented with every possible combination of IDE/ACHI/RAID settings 
in the bios at least three times. The frequency of errors sems to be at 
a minimum with the controller set to AHCI/Enhanced/Force Gen II.

The complete specifications of the machine are as follows:
Motherboard/PSU/box: Shuttle SD31P (Intel 945G + ICH7-R chipset)
CPU: Pentium D 930
RAM: 2GB
Hard Disks: 2x WD2500JS 250GB SATA-II drives

I am attempting to use Dapper Server 6.06 LTS AMD64. Sometimes the 
machine is stable for as long as an hour, which is how I got it to 
install in the first place. Sometimes it isn't.

The problem is definitely only with Ubuntu: I have run the Hitachi 
disk-fitness test CD's full "Advanced" test on both disks with zero 
errors. I have also run up a basic Windows 2000 install on the machine 
and used it to throw some multi-gigabyte files around from disk to disk. 
  Again, no errors at all, and performance remained fine.

Suggestions, anyone?

-- 
    Thorne Huw Lawler                                 trouble.net.au
    In thy righteousness shall ye say eeeeew.  -- The Babble of Mela