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Server Nightmare!!

May 26th, 2008 | Category: Computers

So tomorrow (or by the time I finish this post later today) I leave for DC but before hand I needed to get a server setup so that I could work on my research from afar during the summer. The Sun X2100 seem to have problems with the newest version of Ubuntu Server 8.04. They are generating NCQ errors in the SATA controllers. NCQ is part of the SATA II standard and is supposed to increase efficiency however none of our machines hardware liked using it. Thought I would show off the geek fest with a photo of our three servers hooked up to my 50 inch TV with my desktop and mac in the background.

2 Comments so far

Drew June 4th, 2008 11:56 am

For the record: the correct solution to the NCQ bugginess in 2.6.24 as released by Ubuntu Server 8.04 was to set sata_nv.adma=0. Here’s what you do:

1) When first installing, before you partition the disks, jump to VT2 and run
echo 1 > /sys/block/sda/device/queue_depth
to disable NCQ during the install, or you’ll get an error when the installer tries to access the disk.

2) Do your install as normal
3) Reboot to the CD again, choose Recover a broken system
4) Perform step 1 again, then pick the first option of the shells.
5) Run:
echo “options sata_nv adma=0″ >> /etc/modprobe.d/options
6) run
update-initramfs -u

This disables ADMA in the sata_nv module whenever it is loaded and also remakes the initrd with this change, so when you boot, it’ll be correct.

Keywords for search engines: Ubuntu Server SunFire X2100 SATA DRDY ERR NCQ ADMA adma SWNCQ swncq depth 31/32 soft reset
Justin Scott June 30th, 2008 7:59 am

this room is my dream come true…