On Sun, Jan 19, 2003 at 05:53:54PM -0700, Al Davis wrote: > I was getting disk corruption with an older kernel (2.4.8 or > 2.4.18, Mandrake). A colleague said it might have something > to do with a hardware bug (south bridge VIA VT82C686). He also > said there was a fix in recent kernels. I thought it was bad > memory. It did have CONFIG_BLK_DEV_VIA82CXXX=y . The > workaround was to disable DMA. As expected, it has now been > reliable but slow. > > I have since installed Debian, with 2.4.20-bf2.4, and now I > wonder if it is safe to re-enable DMA.
I have a VIA 82C686 southbridge, and 2.4.20 enables its "VIA southbridge workaround" when it boots. So presumably the problem has been addressed to some extent. So far I've had no corruption, but "so far" is only about a week with this MB. I only noticed that boot message today; it may therefore be the case that earlier kernels had a workaround too; but maybe 2.4.20's has been updated. My previous MB had a VIA VT82C596B. Using the same HD, I had ONE instance of disk corruption - something scribbled all over the boot sector of the DOS partition while Linux was running. That was either with kernel 2.2.12 or 2.4.8. It only happened the once, so I never found out what actually caused it. I think there are a lot of VIA chipsets out there but most people don't have problems; presumably some other factor is needed to make the bug show up. Wonder what? Pigeon -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
