[lug] Hard Drive Failure / somehow software issue?

[Lee Woodworth]

Ben wrote:
> I'm getting the weirdest hard drive problem: Sometimes, (sometimes!!) when
> I reboot my server (debian etch, 2.6.18), the kernel boots fine, sees my
> raid (mirroring on / /usr /boot and /home) but during the init process
> says:
> 
> hda: dma_intr: status 0x58 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest }
> ide: failed opcode was: unknown
> hda: set_drive_speed_status: status=0x58 {DriveReady SeekComplete
> DataRequest }
> ide: failed opcode was: unknown
> 
> I get the status=0x58 twice and from that point on, it does the full boot
> process, only for every executable, I get:
> 
> /etc/init.d/rc: line 78: /etc/rcS.d/S05bootlogd: cannot execute binary file
> 
> --and the system is unuseable. If I try to login,  before I can enter a
> password, the login fails because it couldn't load libraries. Same when I
> hit control-alt-delete and try to reboot. I have to manually unpower the
> box and reboot. When it reboots, I might get the same error, but in a
> slightly different place in the boot sequence (say, before it runs set
> hdparm parameters, instead of during or after). And sometimes it boots
> fine and I have no errors, my raids all come up fine and synced. I see no
> errors with smartctl (although I'm running a long test now).
> 
> I'm baffled: If this is hardware, why do I only have problems when I boot?
> If it is software or something, why isn't it consistent between boots? And
> I've got a raid on everything... even if it were hardware, the raid should
> be able to handle that.. and when it boots fine, the raids don't even have
> to resync. And why is the error "cannot execute binary file" ... doesn't
> that mean it sees the file / directory structure? Any ideas?
Sounds like the drive may be on its way out. I had a system that behaved similarly -
Would take several tries to boot from a cold start. The smart diagnostics for
the drive showed some errors, so I replaced the drive.