system locks up while formatting md software raid hdd

[Red Squirrel]

For some reason everytime I try to format a md device on one of my servers it just halts the whole machine. This is how far it gets:


[root@extsrv ~]# mkfs.ext3 /dev/md0
mke2fs 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
Warning: 256-byte inodes not usable on older systems
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
61054976 inodes, 244190624 blocks
12209531 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
Maximum filesystem blocks=4294967296
7453 block groups
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
8192 inodes per group
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
4096000, 7962624, 11239424, 20480000, 23887872, 71663616, 78675968,
102400000, 214990848

Writing inode tables: 142/7453




I tried to create a partition on the md device but I get an error (it's always done this on all servers I've setup) so I just ignored it and formatted the drive directly, I've done this many times no issues till now.

I also get this error at startup, could it be bad ram?

PCI: Error while updating region 0000:00:0d,1.1 (e2040000 != (missed the rest - had to be fast with the camera)

 

[Red Squirrel]

ok seems it's not just restricted to formatting. Did the same thing while doing dd. I figured maybe it was crashing since the disk was previously used in another raid so started a dd.

This time I got this:

[root@extsrv ~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdc

Message from syslogd@extsrv at Dec 30 22:00:52 ...
kernel: do_IRQ: 0.46 No irq handler for vector


Sounds pretty serious. Am I screwed?

 

[Gooberlx2]

Maybe one of the disks is fubar?

 

[Red Squirrel]

testing it now so far no issues. It's weird, it seems any write operations screw up. Tried to format one of the drives with just ext3, froze too. No errors or anything. I'll have to try the drives in another system I guess.

 

[Red Squirrel]

ok I doubt it's the drive. Did self test using smartctl and they came clean. I also tried to format them individually with ext3, the BOTH freeze. This makes no sense. It even does it if I use a boot CD. Anything that writes to it basically locks up the entire system. That machine was my old server, so it can't be the controller either, or I would of had problems before.


Edit: I can confirm it's not the drives. I tested both in another system and they format fine. I'm really at loss here. I tried plugging them into the other sata ports (I have 2 red ones and two black ones) but it would only see 1 drive. Is my motherboard screwed? I really hope not, as it's an older one and will be very hard to replace, I really can't afford to build a whole new system. I already spent enough money on this project, but now it's falling in the water. Would it work if I got a pci sata controller card?

 

[Nothinman]

It's definitely a hardware problem of some sort and if you can't get the other controller to detect the drives that's not a good sign.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I ordered a cheap pci controller card for 50 bucks so it should be here in the next few weeks. I'll hope for the best. Weird it would just stop working though. That was my old server and I had no hdd issues at all. In fact I had a raid 1 with the exact same drives I'm using now, only difference is that those drives were then moved to a raid 5 then retired. The drives are in normal condition though. So guess I'll see what happens when the controller comes in.

It's weird I don't get any kernel errors though, other then the startup one, which I'm not sure if it's related or not.

I could probably get away with formatting the drives in another system then moving them but rather not take the chance.