Re: HD dying?

On Thu, 6 Apr 2017 20:51:51 +0000
"Robin H. Johnson" <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 05, 2017 at 08:26:12PM -0400, David Niklas wrote:
> > The symptoms leading up to the event was a sudden freeze of the OS. I
> > was not too bright about Linux at the time, so I thought that perhaps
> > X froze. Now I'm getting the identical thing, a sudden freeze. I can
> > ping the kernel, I cannot restore the frame buffer, sync, or umount
> > the file systems. My syslog metalog records no messages during this
> > period, it is set to sync the dmesg messages. I cannot ssh, but I can
> > uses sysreq to reboot. I'm using OpenRC.  
> Metalog would only be useful is writes to disk were succeeding. It's
> certainly possible for the kernel to hang in such a state that there is
> kernel panic, and writes to disk are not happening (this includes
> sending the sysrq-sync command).
> 
> That you can ping the kernel simply says that there's enough left
> running for the kernel to handle ICMP without going to userspace.
> 
> That you can't SSH says something in userspace failed (which could be a
> myriad of reasons).
> 
> Just because the system seems to freeze does not mean that the drive is
> faulty. Also entirely possible there is a logged drive event in dmesg
> that you can't see.
> 
> If you can repeat it, consider some of the following to get a better
> insight as to what's going on.
> - set up serial kernel console or network kernel console logging.
> - set up kdump or similar.
No, It's random so far.

> That's not to say that the drive isn't the source of the problem, just
> that it's not likely based on the output you've shown.
Why not?
What else causes all writes to the drive to stop except a problem with
the drive or MB (my laptop has not cabling)?

> You say this is a laptop, and the drive by power hours has racked up
> ~1.5 years of usage, so it possibly hasn't been opened in at least that
> long. How much dust has built up inside it? Overheating of the graphics
> CAN cause the symptoms you've described.
The laptop is my primary way to get online, it's not be left off for more
than 2 days unless it's HW failed (the original drive died).


So, I'm not misreading the S.M.A.R.T. data? No values that aught to be
interpreted in HEX, OCTAL or something?


Thanks,
David

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