when booting from a Debian jessie installer the kernel spams the following messages...ata2.00: status: { DRDY ERR }ata2.00: error: { ABRT }ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0ata2.00: BMDMA stat 0x25ata2.00: failed command: READ DMAata2.00: cmd c8/00:08:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 4096 inres 51/04:08:00:00:00/04:00:2e:00:00/e0 Emask 0x1 (device error)ata2.00: status: { DRDY ERR }ata2.00: error: { ABRT }Does this mean the disk is broken or is there some configuration error?EDIT: The disk is broken, thanks for the help
Harddrive error on boot
debian
Yes, these messages indicate a hardware error.I am assuming that you verified that ata2 indeed refers to the hard drive and not, e.g., a CD-ROM drive from which you are running the installation.The question is, is it the drive or is it possibly the cable connecting the motherboard to the drive?I had a system once that regularly gave such messages. It had a mirrored configuration that sometimes ran for months without trouble, but then one drive (always, consistently the same drive) dropped out, with similar messages in the system log. It turned out to be a faulty SATA cable; once the cable was replaced with a new one, no more errors occurred.So that would be my recommendation: Try a) reconnecting the cable, b) changing the cable. Also, c) check the hard drive power cable. And d) if you have another power supply try swapping power supplies as well, since a failing power supply can also cause such errors. If all these fail, you might have to conclude that the drive is, in fact, faulty.But before you do that, try to see if you can get diagnostic information from the drive if it has S.M.A.R.T. capabilities. Try, e.g., smartctl /dev/hda (or whichever device the drive happens to be.) You may need to do a smartctl -s on /dev/hda first to enable S.M.A.R.T. Note though that a failing data cable can cause spurious messages in the drive, so be sure you don't misinterpret the smartctl results.