[gentoo-user] Re: log messages

[Jörg Schaible]

Hi Harry,

Harry Putnam wrote:

> Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com> writes:
>
>> On Wednesday 17 February 2010 00:36:42 Harry Putnam wrote:
>>> Hundreds, maybe thousands of lines like this (wrapped for mail):
>>>
>>>   Feb 16 09:38:47 reader kernel: [162289.090685] usb 4-2.1:1.1: uevent
>>>
>>>   Feb 16 09:38:48 reader kernel: [162289.467065] hdc: status error:
>>>   status=0x00 { }
>>>
>>>   Feb 16 09:38:48 reader kernel: [162289.467071] hdc: possibly failed
>>>   opcode: 0xa0
>>>
>>>   Feb 16 09:38:48 reader kernel: [162289.467079] ide-atapi: hdc:
>>>   Strange, packet command initiated yet DRQ isn't asserted
>>>
>>> When I noticed this output involving the cdrom I wondered if I might
>>> have left something in it but that was not the case.
>>
>> Do you have hal configured to poll your cdrom drive every two seconds, to
>> see if a disk is inserted? And if so, is the verbosity logging cranked up
>> way higher than it should be?
>>
>> I haven't personally had to fix this myself (so can't give pointers on
>> where to fix it), but it seems to be a common occurrence judging from
>> posts I see here and at other forums.
>
> I do have hald running, but made no special config regarding cdrom
> polling.  At least not on purpose.
>
> The messages do appear to be continuous.  I will execute a reboot soon
> but don't want to right now.
>
> Why I'm pondering and following this up, is that I experience a
> serious freeze after some unspecified amount of uptime.  Mouse and
> keyboard become unresponsive... and eventually the OS cannot be
> accessed at all.
>
> SSH appears to stop and cannot contact remotely either.
>
> This began happening quite some time ago... on a different earlier
> install.  I never could see anything in the logs that gave a clue to
> why.
>
> I created a script that ran from cron.  It pinged a remote host, and
> logged a unique easily findable string into the log using `logger',
> every 5 minutes.  With that I was able to narrow down the time frame
> of freeze to within the last 5 minutes (of log lines).
>
> Even then, there was nothing to indicate a problem.  This was an OS
> that had been running a very long time with upgrade after upgrade.
>
> Though I hated having to rebuild all the customizations etc, I finally
> completely reinstalled from scratch hoping to catch the problem with
> the shotgun approach.
>
> In that earlier OS there were no log messages regarding hdc being
> generated (by the way).
>
> Shortly after completing the new install and a couple of weeks of
> getting setup the way I wanted, I began to experience the freezes
> again.
>
> I have caught the freeze in the early stages before completely losing
> the network when just mouse and keyboard became unresponsive, was able
> to ssh in and noticed that restarting hald held off the freeze for
> some (again unspecified) amount of time.
>
> So cutting the lengthy narrative down a bit, and briefly put, I'm
> looking for anything unusual that is causing this.  The hdc messages
> is the only odd thing I'm seeing.
>
> Something appears to be jamming up the hal layer somehow, but not
> leaving findable tracks.  At least not findable by an someone with
> many yrs experience with linux but not much real debugging of
> complicated problems under his belt.

I had once similar freezes and effects until I recognized that our rabbit 
had bitten into an USB cable and the computer got undefined signals on the 
USB due to contacts of the blank cable lines.

Try to disconnect any external USB device first and check if the problem 
persists.

- Jörg