Update. I had a friend with a power supply checker check the power supply. The +12 volt line is running at 11.5v, barely within spec. Fishy, but livable for the nonce.
I had been running Finnix as Debian wouldn't boot. I pulled all the external USB lines except for a 3.5" external floppy disk drive. The USB problem that started all this went away, i.e. I stopped getting error messages in dmesg. I rebooted Finnix, and did not see the error message. Also, the boot speed was back to normal. An hour and a half ago I booted to the installed Debian system, and that now runs fine. I see no error messages for USB or for any of the drives. RAID looks nominal. I will monitor. The next step will be to add back external USB lines, one at a time, and see if the problem re-appears. It may have been something as simple as mild corrosion on a connector. Meanwhile, I did long tests on the hard drives and SSD; all passed. I've seen no hard drive error messages all day. On Mon, 25 Apr 2022 14:56:50 -0700 David Christensen <dpchr...@holgerdanske.com> wrote: > On 4/25/22 07:18, Charles Curley wrote: > > On Sun, 24 Apr 2022 22:52:15 -0700 > > David Christensen <dpchr...@holgerdanske.com> wrote: > > > >> So, RAID 5 HDD's are sda, sdc, and sdd, and optical is sdb? > > > > Optical is sr0. > > > Interesting. (Must be the SATA controller expansion card?) Yup. > > > Debian and finnix see things differently. On both. sdc and sdd are > > part of the RAID array. On Debian, sda is the system drive: /, > > /home, /etc, swap, /boot, etc.. sdb is part of the RAID array. > > Finnix swaps those two. > > > Okay. > > > Rather than a Live Linux distribution for troubleshooting, I install > Debian onto a USB flash drive (SanDisk Ultra Fit USB 3.0 16 GB). I > keep it updated/ upgraded, and install whatever tools I want. You > might want to make one that matches your Debian instance -- that > should eliminate the device enumeration differences. Would that have solved this transposition? I suspect that Linux sets up the boot drive as sda regardless of how the firmware sees things. But otherwise a good idea, if a bit of work. > > > >> SATA cables -- Color? Locking or non-locking connectors? Came > >> with motherboard or aftermarket? If the latter, make and model? > > > > All black, two red. The black ones came with the computer. The red > > ones are aftermarket, Alchemy SATA3 30 cm. BFA-MSC-SATA330RK-RP. > > All lock. > > > https://www.frozencpu.com/products/14060/cab-572/Bitfenix_Alchemy_Multisleeve_SATA_30_Cable_-_30cm_-_Red_BFA-MSC-SATA330RK-RP.html > > > Those Alchemy SATA cables look good. Assuming you like them, I would > replace the factory cables with new Alchemy cables. I'll keep that in mind. I have one spare, so I can swap that in in pretty quick order if need be. > > > >> Please run long tests now on all three drives. Save all of the > >> reports. Post the report(s) for any drive(s) with SMART failures > >> and/or dmesg(1) errors. > > > > Long tests run about 10 hours. I did one overnight on sdd, and it > > reported no errors. No dmesg errors sine the ones I reported in the > > original email. > > > I launch SMART tests on all of the drives at the same time. The > microcontroller in each drive runs the test for that drive > independently, so it is okay to run all the tests concurrently. I did figure that out, and tested the three remaining drives. All tested with no errors. > > > I still don't see the source of the original dmesg(1) errors. I > would: I've done some of these. But as I am not seeing any more hard drive issues, I'm not going to spend any more time on the rest. > > 7. Boot memtest86+ and run overnight or longer. Interestingly enough, memtest86 locks up right at the 4096 MB mark. It also completely refuses to run on another system I have here. I'm going to do some further testing, then report what I see in a new thread. > > > If and when you have convinced yourself that all of the hardware is > good, then software is what remains. Yup. > > > Did you figure out what was preventing Debian from booting? Is the > Debian instance fixed? I think so; see above. -- Does anybody read signatures any more? https://charlescurley.com https://charlescurley.com/blog/
