make menuconfig fails during install (not ncurses thing)

butters

This seems like an I/O error involving /dev/hda. Here are some of the lines from make menuconfig:

hda: dma_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hda: dma_intr: error=0x40 { UncorrectableError } LBAsect=? sector=?
endrequest: I/O error, dev 03:03 (hda)
vs-13070: reiserfs_read_inode2: i/o failure occurred trying to find stat data of [1440 2299 0x0 SD]
In file included from checklist.c:24
dialog.h:25:19: Permission Denied

And then gives the ever helpful Error 1 and Error 2 sequence before dying. I am installing from stage3 on i586 (pentium classic) and attempting to use the gentoo-sources kernel. Has anyone seen this before or know what it means?
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ebrostig · Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2003 8:05 pm Post subject:

Well...
It looks like you have one or more bad sectors on your disk. It is basically an I/O error, I would recommend that your run a filesystem check.

fsck /dev/hdb

If this comes back clean, it may be related to your controller rather than the physical disk.

Erik
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butters · Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2003 8:35 pm Post subject:

So what if its the controller? You mean the hardware is at fault?
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ebrostig · Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2003 12:22 am Post subject:

It may be.

It is really hard to say. The error just indicates that something is wrong with the disk system, It may be either the disk or the controller.

Just came to think about one thing right now, have you changed the disk behaviour using hdparm? Or maybe you have overclocked the PC?

Erik
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butters · Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2003 5:25 pm Post subject:

Maybe I should overclock, since this machine's only a 200 MHz Pentium Classic!! But, no, I haven't changed anything with hdparm or overclocked at all, figuring that the install kernel would enable DMA by default on the single IDE hard drive on hda. The drive is brand spankin' new, though, so I would tend to rule out the drive being the problem. This machine's old hard drive stopped working, but that one had the dreaded clicking of death, and this new one doesn't.

I tried wiping the partitions, recreating them and zeroing with

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda{1,2,3} bs=1K count=1

Then I started from stage3 again. This time I got the same error as last time, but now while untar-ing the stage3 tarball.

In other words, I need to set up some sort of controlled experiment to see whether I actually have a hardware problem. I am thinking maybe:

1. Boot the debian install kernel, make new partition table, install filesystems and setup networking using their utilities. Then grab the stage3 tarball and continue the gentoo install from within the debian install kernel.

2. If that doesn't work, try installing straight debian, since I'd like to get something running on this box.

3. If I really have a hardware problem (I'd know by this step), yell and scream and complain of the "curse of computer engineering major" (where you can never get anything to work just because you're supposed to know how to fix it). Followed by heavy drinking. . .
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If tugboats were bigger, they'd be the ones getting tugged.