I have a Promise TX4302 controller installed in Dell Optiplex GX270
with a Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750 drive connected to the controller
through one of the eSATA ports. Although it appears that the
sata_promise module supports this controller, I'm seeing errors in
log. They look like:

ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
ata1.00: configured for UDMA/33
ata1: EH complete
SCSI device sda: 1465149168 512-byte hdwr sectors (750156 MB)
sda: Write Protect is off
sda: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x2
ata1.00: (port_status 0x20200000)
ata1.00: cmd 35/00:00:cf:05:69/00:04:01:00:00/e0 tag 0 cdb 0x0 data
524288 out
res 51/84:00:ce:09:69/84:00:01:00:00/e0 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)
ata1: soft resetting port

I am running Centos 5.1 -- uname -a
Linux asterisk 2.6.18-53.1.4.el5 #1 SMP Fri Nov 30 00:45:16 EST 2007
i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux


How can I find out what these errors are and is there some way I can
eliminate them? They appear to be affecting performance because at
times the drive doesn't seem very responsive.

Regards,
Todd

In article <7af1e02a-6fe8-4582-86a5-24014ca3b694@m3g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>,
toddinpal <toddjlittle@gmail.com> wrote:
>I have a Promise TX4302 controller installed in Dell Optiplex GX270
>with a Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750 drive connected to the controller
>through one of the eSATA ports. Although it appears that the
>sata_promise module supports this controller, I'm seeing errors in
>log. They look like:
>
>ata1: SATA link up 1.5 Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 310)
>ata1.00: configured for UDMA/33
>ata1: EH complete
>SCSI device sda: 1465149168 512-byte hdwr sectors (750156 MB)
>sda: Write Protect is off
>sda: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
>SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
>ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x2
>ata1.00: (port_status 0x20200000)
>ata1.00: cmd 35/00:00:cf:05:69/00:04:01:00:00/e0 tag 0 cdb 0x0 data
>524288 out
>res 51/84:00:ce:09:69/84:00:01:00:00/e0 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)
>ata1: soft resetting port
>
>I am running Centos 5.1 -- uname -a
>Linux asterisk 2.6.18-53.1.4.el5 #1 SMP Fri Nov 30 00:45:16 EST 2007
>i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
>
>
>How can I find out what these errors are and is there some way I can
>eliminate them? They appear to be affecting performance because at
>times the drive doesn't seem very responsive.

It could be that 2.6.18-53.1.4.el5 is ancient and lacks many of the
recent (post-2.6.20) sata_promise updates, or it could be some quirk
with the eSATA drive. Off-hand, the error you showed looks a lot like
the one caused by the ASIC S/G PRD table bug for which a workaround
was implemented in the 2.6.24 kernel and later backported to the
stable 2.6.22 and 2.6.23 kernel series.

I can say however that the TX4302 is the same chip as the SATA300TX4
but in a different PCI card with different internal-to-external port
mapping, and that other reports indicate that the TX4302 works fine.

I recommend you try the latest www.kernel.org kernels and the
linux-kernel and linux-ide mailing lists for support (or bugzilla).
For the 2.6.18-53.1.4.el4 kernel you need to contact CentOS and/or RedHat.
--
Mikael Pettersson (mikpe@it.uu.se)
Computing Science Department, Uppsala University