[Arm-netbook] RAM, uboot

[Mike Thompson]

On Mon, May 21, 2012 at 2:05 AM, David Given <dg at cowlark.com> wrote:
> Mike Thompson wrote:
> [...]
>> Thanks to your efforts with the kernel I have a Debian Wheezy armhf
>> system running on the Mele A1000.  Unfortunately, as I've started to
>> use this system to run builds of some large Debian packages I'm seeing
>> infrequent SATA errors that are corrupting the ext4 file system and
>> causing my builds to fail.
>
> I haven't been seeing anything like that, but I *have* had persistent
> minor file system corruption, and have been getting other really weird
> errors and crashes over the weekend, reported elsewhere.

I've also been getting ext4 corruption that I attributed to the errors
that I'm seeing from the SATA driver.  Also, I'm occasionally get seg
faults in applications which should not have them.  Again I'm
attributing these to the SATA errors, but without much evidence.

> I dunno. My knowledge basically extends to turning the driver on and
> doing basic low-level debugging. Power does seem plausible, though. A
> lot of cheapo power supplies are extremely dubious. I've noticed that if
> I unplug the main power while the A1000 is hooked up to the serial
> console, the HDD powers down but about 2/3 of the time the processor
> stays running!

I'll be out of town for a few days, but when I get back I'll try using
a more robust power supply than what came with the Mele.  Looking at
it, it does seem pretty small and maybe the SATA drive attached to the
system is causing intermittent power issues.

I'll cross my fingers that's the issue as it's pretty easy to fix.  If
there are deeper issues lurking in the SATA driver I don't really have
the knowledge required to go after them to any major extent.

Mike