Why would functioning hard drive cause kernel panic?

[birdsarah]

Hi,

I have a new GazP6 - loving it.

I got a caddy case to put my hard drive from my thinkpad into the optical drive.

This causes a kernel panic every few hours - although the time between panics was increasing - 12 hours for the last one - it's not a good thing.

I am pretty sure it's the hard drive and not the caddy as I put in a different hard drive from a different thinkpad and everything was fine.

The specs of the hard drive that causes kernel panics are (320GB 7200 rpm):
description: ATA Disk
product: ST9320423AS
vendor: Seagate
physical id: 0.0.0
bus info: scsi@2:0.0.0
logical name: /dev/sda
version: 0003
serial: 5VH41VYB
size: 298GiB (320GB)
capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
configuration: ansiversion=5 signature=00097ed4

The specs of the hard drive that doesn't are (80GB 5400rpm):
description: ATA Disk
product: HTS541080G9SA00
vendor: Hitachi
physical id: 1
bus info: scsi@2:0.0.0
logical name: /dev/sdb
version: MB4I
serial: MPBDPAXNH0UJLM
size: 74GiB (80GB)
capabilities: partitioned partitioned:dos
configuration: ansiversion=5 signature=ed1f86f7

When either of the above drives are the hard drive of my thinkpad I have no issues.

The 80GB drive is nearly 5 years old, the 320 GB hard drive is 9 months old.

I would prefer to be able to have the larger drive in my new GazP6.

Thanks,

Bird

[birdsarah]

Hi,

so it turns out they're both causing it!

So sad.

Help welcome.

[Actonix]

Check out what the panic is, that should help you identify the problem, post it here if you need further help with it,

Open up a terminal and run the following command

sudo dmesg -n 1

Would probably also help to provide a bit more detail to assist, Are you running Ubuntu on both systems and what partition types exist on the drives ?

[birdsarah]

Hi,

dmesg with "-n 1" gives me nothing at all.

just plain dmesg has lots of stuff not sure if any of it's relevant though.

Just to clarify, I am now pretty certain it's the caddy given that both hard drives have now caused a kernel panic although one much more so than the other. I have now put the optical bay back in to confirm this and am going to wait a day or so. If I am kernel panic free then System76 will replace the caddy.

If not - then I guess it's either software - which wouldn't make any sense as there doesn't appear to be one specific thing that causes it or some kind of internal hardware problem which would mean sending back my beautiful laptop which would make me sad. So I'm hoping it's the caddy!

And yes, all the hard drives are from Linux Ubuntu 11.04 systems with ext4 file system.

And - thank you!

Best,

Bird

[birdsarah]

So sad....the optical drive is back in and after a promising 9 hours I just got another kernel panic....I have a horrible feeling that this means that there's something wrong with the laptop I've fallen in love with (in spite of the 10 kernel panics in 3 days). Thoughts welcome.

Bird

[birdsarah]

Well that's a first - two kernel panics in 15 minutes! Sigh.

This time they were both during a large file transfer between an external hard drive and my SSD.

Help - this is a major bummer.

[Actonix]

Hi again,

Would have thought others would have assisted you in seeking resolution here by now, sadly, I've not really been around much of late and only pop in very briefly when I do look in.

The command I gave you was meant to be used to show up the kernel panics and as such will show nothing if you issue it when no panics have occurred - the details thus obtained should help you or anybody else that may be able to assist you in identifying the problem and seeking appropriate solution.

I could go further and provide you with commands to check your files-system which is one of the areas your problem might lie in but then again if the problem is intermittent it might actually be related to the caddy interface ie loose connectivity between it and the PC in question which could also result in a corrupt file-system - if the latter is the case you might be able to find resolution by loosening the screws holding the hard disk in, squaring out the caddy in order to get a better connection and re-tighten.

Whatever the case, when next a panic occurs try and post the details here and take things from there.

I wish you the best of luck with things.

[birdsarah]

Hi!

Just had ANOTHER Kernel Panic! sudo dmesg -n 1 reveals nothing. (I am doing this after a reboot as I am completely locked out of the machine when it happens - Ctl-Alt-F1 doesn't take me to a terminal - completely stuck).

It is not the caddy as I put the optical drive back in.

It is not the bluetooth as I have had that off since the last one as a test.

This is so disappointing. I have been looking forward to owning a System76 for 8 months now.

I have long-used my Thinkpad with Ubuntu and loved it. When it came time for a replacement I decided that investing in a company who specifically built and supported hardware for Ubuntu would be awesome....I am now about 3 kernel panics away from feeling like I've made a horrible mistake.

[birdsarah]

Let's make that 2 kernel panics

[Actonix]

Hi!

Just had ANOTHER Kernel Panic! sudo dmesg -n 1 reveals nothing. (I am doing this after a reboot as I am completely locked out of the machine when it happens - Ctl-Alt-F1 doesn't take me to a terminal - completely stuck).

It is not the caddy as I put the optical drive back in.

It is not the bluetooth as I have had that off since the last one as a test.

Hmmm, unfortunately it does not help that you cannot run it when it could give an indication as your system is frozen, and for the same reason though the error is logged on the screen the system is essentially not functioning at this point and so does not get logged to file.

Well, as you have eliminated the caddy let's checkout other areas - you can try using lm-sensors to measure the CPU temp while it is under load - eliminate overheating as the cause,

... from a terminal run

sensors

... might as well go a step further and use pSensor as it's more visual, a GUI

... I think you get that from Universe, install via Synaptic or from a terminal

sudo apt-get install psensor

- and try MemTest86+ to test your RAM (you can do this from the Live CD )

... a process of problem resolution by elimination - slow it might be but if you persevere we will get there.

So far, if I read into things and made a haphazard a guess I would say overheating is the cause and I say this as you indicate the kernel panics to be closer after an initial freeze and reboot, might be a failed or failing fan or more simply just accumulated dirt hindering the cooling process - if you could open up the laptop or at least the area the fan is located you could easily clean that up and or verify this to be or not the case.