Okay, I'm getting some errors in my syslog referring to ATA10.  How do I know which disk this is?

 

 

grep for it in the syslog, and determine the serial number

aaahhhhh!!! the SERIAL NUMBER !!!  DOH!!! 

 

 

Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple.  The serial number only appears in the drive inventory table (Device Inventory) and the Export tables, neither of which show the ata numbers.  In general, especially for higher ata numbers like ata10, the scsi number will be identical, scsi 10:0:0:0 and sd 10:0:0:0.  The sd lines will have the drive's Device ID, such as sdk or sdc.  So the drive's ata ID would be ata10.00, the ata channel ID would be ata10, the SCSI IDs would (probably) be scsi 10:0:0:0 and sd 10:0:0:0, and the Device ID might be sdk.  Here is an example:

kernel: ata10: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)

kernel: ata10.00: ATA-7: ST3250620NS, 3.AEK, max UDMA/133

kernel: ata10.00: 488397168 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32)

kernel: ata10.00: configured for UDMA/133

kernel: scsi 10:0:0:0: Direct-Access    ATA      ST3250620NS      3.AE PQ: 0 ANSI: 5

kernel: sd 10:0:0:0: [sdk] 488397168 512-byte logical blocks: (250 GB/232 GiB)

 

There are several factors that can complicate this.  The newest kernel releases often pick up the USB flash drive later in the sequence than earlier kernels, which means the scsi numbers may not be identical with the ata numbers.  Scsi numbers begin at zero, ata numbers begin at one.  Because the USB drive was usually picked up first in the past, and USB drives do not get ata numbers, it would get scsi0, which would effectively make the scsi numbers begin at 1 just like the ata numbers.  But now, a common situation is for an Adaptec or Promise card to be picked up first, using up scsi numbers 0 to 3 and ata numbers 1 to 4, then the flash drive gets scsi4, then the rest of the drives will get matching scsi and ata numbers.  In this case, only the first 4 are off by one.  In the future, this situation is going to get worse, when we support SAS drives, because like the USB drives, they don't seem to get ata numbers either, only scsi numbers.

 

Another complication is the handling of multiple drives per channel, such as true IDE drives and drives in an IDE emulation mode and drives in a Port Multiplier setup.  Then you still might have the ata10 channel, but one drive could be ata10.00 (scsi 10:0:0:0) and the other ata10.01 (scsi 10:0:1:0), or in a PMP setup could be ata10.05 (scsi 10:0:5:0(?)).  Both IDE drives and all of the PMP drives are on the same ata10 channel.

Phew.... what a can of worms !!! 

 

I've attached my current syslog... can someone look at it and give me a clue 

 

Nov  8 13:38:09 SERVER kernel: ata10.00: ATA-8: ST31000340AS, SD1A, max UDMA/133

Nov  8 13:38:09 SERVER kernel: ata10.00: 1953525168 sectors, multi 0: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32)

Nov  8 13:38:09 SERVER kernel: ata10.00: configured for UDMA/133

Nov  8 13:38:09 SERVER kernel: scsi 11:0:0:0: Direct-Access    ATA      ST31000340AS    SD1A PQ: 0 ANSI: 5

Nov  8 13:38:09 SERVER kernel: sd 11:0:0:0: [sdh] 1953525168 512-byte logical blocks: (1.00 TB/931 GiB)

.....

Nov  8 13:38:09 SERVER emhttp: pci-0000:00:1f.2-scsi-1:0:0:0 (sdh) ata-ST31000340AS_5QJ0ZZ80

 

ata10.00 = (sdh) ata-ST31000340AS_5QJ0ZZ80

 

;-)

Thanks.