Topic: HDParm disaster!

[Stephen]

Hi,
While moving a large file from my SME server today I noticed that it seemed to be taking a very long time. I did a few tests with some other Win2K macines on my 100MB network and was getting aroung 60-70Mbps, which is about what I expected. However a similar sized file from the SME was only managing about 6Mbps! I searched the forums and found that the server doesn't use UDMA as standard! Ha ha! I thought the answer to my problems and promptly turned it on using the istructions here:
http://myezserver.com/downloads/mitel/howto/hdparm-howto.html
All went smoothly, I rebooted and ran the test again. 8Mbps! This was not what I was hoping for.
So I went back to the forums. It seems that simply turning on hdparm is not enough, you have to set parameters for each disk. Seems obvious really!
So I followed the advise I found in the forum and copied the file /etc/sysconfig/harddisks to /etc/sysconfig/harddiskhda and edited out the #'s to activate the options.
I may have been a little over ambitious with the number of options I included! I enabled everything in the file and included -X34 as an extra parameter as my motherboard is UDMA33 only.
When I rebooted the system hung at:
setting parameters for hda.......
Doh!
Anyway now I can't boot to change the file (or remove it). I have tried single user mode but it still sets the hda parameters (or fails to!).
How can I change this file? Any help much appreciated.
Steve


My hardware is as follows:
Intel Celeron 400
128MB RAM
Quantum fireball 12G harddisk (UDMA 66 capable)
440LX chipset motherboard, Daewoo!
Cheapo Realtek 10/100 ethernet card.

[Johan]

Hy Steve,

I have had succes whith booting off a linux version on a bootble CD.
On this moment knoppix is a good one yoy can download the iso file on http://www.knoppix.de I sounds like German but the there is also a Englich version.

When you boot whit this Cd in your player you get a complete Linux workstation on your system but only on you CD it's write's nothing to yor Harddisk.

Then you can start a linux promt mount the Hardisk make your changes to orginal i hope you no what you have done. Save your work back
And Reboot your system whit no CD it and your SME server is booting again

goodluck

Johan

[Scott Smith]

http://crashrecovery.org/

[Bob Todd]

so you havent made the emergency recovery disk

[Stephen]

Ok,
Fixed it now. Now to try again!...
I used a boot CD from crashrecovery.org
I still had a problem because was trying to mount HDA2 when I should have been trying to mount HDA6!
Steve

[Stephen]

Hello again.
Well now I'm really confused! It seems it doesn't matter what settings I have I can't get more than 14.6Mbps from the drive. I've had up to 27Mbps under 'other' OSes.
I'm using "hdparm -tT /dev/hda" to test this.
Can anyone recommend what hdparm settings are appropiate. I am using a Quantum Fireball CR (12G) connected to an Intel 440LX IDE chipset. The drive has been changed to ATA 33 using Quantums utility as that is all the board supports and I thought it might be causing a problem.
I am using -u1 -d1 -m16 -c3 -X66.
Also I'm not sure where to put this info. I originally used the /etc/sysconfig/harddiskhda file, which I had to create, but after entering some settings from the command line this file no longer seems to do anything. I then switched to using the /etc.rc.d/init.d/hdparm file but that now seems to have stopped working aswell!
Anyone else using HDParm? If so HOW?
Steve