Kernel Panics and SATA Errors: ICH7 & WD drives

[Thorne Lawler]

Dear Ubuntu gurus,

If there's anything I might need to add to the information below, 
regarding a Kernel panic on brand new, very, very generic Intel chipset 
hardware, please let me know.

If there's somewhere else I should be taking this, please also let me know.

Thank you.

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

Thorne Lawler wrote:
> 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?
>