[ILUG] Newbie seeks help interpreting /var/log messages

[Michael Conry]

On Tue, 19 Oct 2004 13:29:03 +0100, Ciaran Mulloy <cmulloy at esatclear.ie> wrote:
> Hi,
> I am running Suse 9.1 professional at home.
> I was surprised when I checked out some of my log files  to find large compressed files 
> with the following lines:
> 
> Oct 12 04:22:50 dhcppc1 kernel: hdc: packet command error: error=0x54
> Oct 12 04:22:51 dhcppc1 kernel: hdc: packet command error: status=0x51
> { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
A good way to find out about messages like this is to put some of it
in Google in inverted commas e.g. "packet command error: error=0x54".
(I leave out the hdc bit because it's specific to how your hardware is
assembled)
This indicates that it's  a pretty common message obtained by people using
CD/DVD/RW, etc.,

Anyway, I found those not so useful myself  this time so I thought I'd
have a quick look
in the kernel source directory to see where that message appears from.
 You could do this
using the following command in the base directory of the kernel
sources (i used 2.6.7)

find . -type f -exec grep -H "SeekComplete" '{}' \;

Among other instances, the most useful reference (for a non-kernel
hacker like me) that this seemed to turn up was:
./drivers/ide/Kconfig:    hda: set_multmode: status=0x51 {
DriveReadySeekComplete Error }
This is in the config-documentation for the kernel. Looking in the file we see:

config IDEDISK_MULTI_MODE
    bool "Use multi-mode by default"
    depends on BLK_DEV_IDEDISK
    help
      If you get this error, try to say Y here:

      hda: set_multmode: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
      hda: set_multmode: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }

      If in doubt, say N.

This isn't qute the same as your log message, but the error message is
the same so it  could be a solution to toggle this kernel option and
recompile.

If this isn't actually causing you any trouble (i.e. if the drive
works ok) then it's probably not worth the hassle to recompile your
kernel just to get rid of the error message (I'm assuming you're
unfamiliar with the kernel compile/installation process), in
particular if you get support from SuSE as I doubt they'd support a
custom kernel.

However, if you've been meaning to learn to compile your kernel and
have been looking for an excuse, well this could be it  ;-) (but be
careful and read docs if you do!)

michael