OK, I checked the hardware and there are two drives in the machine - one for boot and one with photos and other data. They are connected to a PCI controller card that had two channels. So, I tried switching the cable on the controller card to the second channel.

After booting with knoppix, fdisk -l showed the two drives. I went for the gold and tried booting the system normally. It ran into some read errors from the boot drive when running a forced disk check, so it dropped down into maintenance mode and I ran fsck /dev/sda1. I let it correct the errors it found and then the machine booted up and is running. During the boot up fsck was forced to run again on the second drive, but no errors were found.

One fatality from the fsck on the boot drive - backuppc dies because there were some bad nodes found in one of the perl modules.

I think I need a new controller card and to reload some software. How would I tell aptitude to download and re-install what is currently on the system? My thinking is that will correct any issues caused by the bad nodes found on the boot drive. If I can get this drive back in good shape, it may be time for a new drive as well.

Any other thoughts or ideas?

Mark

On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 10:04 PM, Mark Phillips <mark@phillipsmarketing.biz> wrote:

Thanks. I will have to tear into the hardware tomorrow to see what I find.

Mark

On Tue, Feb 4, 2014 at 2:46 AM, Michael Butash <michael@butash.net> wrote:

I think it's pooped out... and it only sees one.

[ 5.956680] ata3: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)

[ 10.970015] ata3: device not ready (errno=-16), forcing hardreset
[ 16.136680] ata3: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[ 20.990011] ata3: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[ 26.156678] ata3: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[ 31.010012] ata3: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[ 36.176675] ata3: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[ 66.043340] ata3: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[ 71.050008] ata3: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[ 71.061817] ata3: reset failed, giving up

This was a bit interesting though:

[ 0.939779] ata1: PATA max UDMA/100 cmd 0x1f0 ctl 0x3f6 bmdma 0xffa0 irq 14

[ 0.939783] ata2: PATA max UDMA/100 cmd 0x170 ctl 0x376 bmdma 0xffa8 irq 15
[ 0.939875] ata1: port disabled--ignoring
[ 0.943281] pata_sil680 0000:01:07.0: version 0.4.9
[ 0.943325] sil680: 133MHz clock.
[ 0.944316] scsi2 : pata_sil680
[ 0.944507] scsi3 : pata_sil680
[ 0.944666] ata3: PATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xecf8 ctl 0xecf0 bmdma 0xecc0 irq 16
[ 0.944671] ata4: PATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xece0 ctl 0xecd8 bmdma 0xecc8 irq 16
[ 0.945455] Error: Driver 'pata_platform' is already registered, aborting...

It sees the one on ata3, and read your cdrom, but the drive is stalling response, not sure that's not due to kernel oddities though at the end of that. Check the status of the drives in the bios, it should usually register or show them in legacy bios ata devices. Can try to play with the ata modes in the bios.

Maybe try changing the modes or jumpers, maybe they're both master devices? Mmm, master/slave jumpers, makes me feel old to remember them on drives...

Try one at a time too to rule it out, or another controller.

-mb