On Wed, 16 Jul 2003 08:47:48 -0400 (EDT)
Alan Cox [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

FWIW, just like my alim5x3 based Sparcs, I have to boot with ide=nodma
on my VAIO laptop which uses PIIX chipsets, otherwise I get data
corruptions.

Ok thats I think a first ever and only report for the VAIO. Are you using
ACPI and what compiler are you using ? Do you have APIC support enabled ?
Does it occur with a vanilla Red Hat 2.4.20- kernel ?

No ACPI, stock compiler from RH8.0 with all updates installed:

gcc (GCC) 3.2 20020903 (Red Hat Linux 8.0 3.2-7)

CONFIG_X86_GOOD_APIC is enabled, but there is no IO-APIC in this
VAIO and /proc/interrupts shows all XT-PIC.

Does not occur with vanilla RH 2.4.20- kernel.

WRT. the VAIO, I originally suspected some of the DMI table changes
that went into 2.4.21, but I reverted that (and nearly all of the
other i386 specific 2.4.21 changes) to no avail.

If you cp lots of data around then compare what is the error pattern,
thats basically essential info to debug this as is the drive data,
mode selected and so on

I'll do this at next opportunity.  It'll take a while since it
requires a whole kernel build in order to trigger the corruption
in the final linked image :(

I'll try using the disk bashing tools from feral.com to see if
that triggers anything easily.

quoted

This suggests, at least to me, that it's something generic in
the IDE layer of 2.4.x vanilla vs. 2.6.0-test1 that's causing
the problems, rather than a chipset specific issue.

That would be unlikely since someone found the ali problem with
sparc/alpha but just never bothered to send a patch to fix it.

Interesting.  I've never seen any evidence from Ben or anyone else who
saw the problem on Sparc say much other than "2.6.0-test1 doesn't have
the problem, 2.4.x does"

Can you show the patch in question?  I guess it's in 2.6.0-test1
already?