Andrew: thanks for isolating this problem.

Tejun: any thoughts?  The STRANGE_BUFFER_LENGTH problem is fixed in the 
code that Andrew is running.  The problem is provoked with '-o on' which 
goes via a TASKFILE ioctl.

Cheers,
 	Bruce

On Tue, 18 Sep 2007, Andrew Paprocki wrote:

It appears to be the '-o on' causing the problem. If I remove that,
the errors go away. The strange part is that according to the smartctl
documentation, my drives support it:

# smartctl -c /dev/sda
smartctl version 5.38 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-7 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x00) Offline data collection activity
                                       was never started.
                                       Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0) The previous self-test routine completed
                                       without error or no self-test has ever
                                       been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection:                 (4797) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities:                    (0x5b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
                                       Auto Offline data collection
on/off support.
                                       Suspend Offline collection upon new
                                       command.
                                       Offline surface scan supported.
                                       Self-test supported.
                                       No Conveyance Self-test supported.
                                       Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
                                       power-saving mode.
                                       Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01) Error logging supported.
                                       General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (   1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time:        (  80) minutes.

Thanks, -Andrew

On 9/18/07, Bruce Allen [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

Does removing '-o on' and/or '-S on' eliminate the errors?


On Mon, 17 Sep 2007, Andrew Paprocki wrote:

quoted

Bruce,

Just built it -- it eliminated the HSM violations, but I still get the
device errors:

smartmontools release 5.38 dated 2006/12/20 at 20:37:59 UTC
(I see the above date, even though I verified it is built from CVS head)

ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
ata2.00: cmd b0/db:f8:00:4f:c2/00:00:00:00:00/00 tag 0 cdb 0x0 data 0
        res 51/04:f8:00:4f:c2/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x1 (device error)
ata2.00: configured for UDMA/100
ata2: EH complete

This is what it is in smartd.conf:
/dev/sda -d ata -a -o on -S on
/dev/sdb -d ata -a -o on -S on
/dev/sdc -d ata -a -o on -S on

Thanks, -Andrew