Problemes 2nd SATA port on Zyxel NAS326: Something wrong with your kernel? (3 replies)

Hello forum,

I'm trying to run my new Zyxel NAS 326 with your kernel and Debian. After 2 non-booting Flash drives I managed to boot Debian 10 with your latest kernels 3.11 and 3.13. Now I wanted to install my new 4TB disks into a LVM RAID1. But something is wrong with the second SATA port (/dev/sdb) when running your kernel!

I checked the SMART values of the new disks with smartctl. Port 1 with /dev/sda works flawlessly but port 2 only emits the info you see when using the command "smartctl -i /dev/sdb" but with options "-a" o "-x" it hangs after these initial infos for 90 seconds or more and then quits. dmesg gives these errors:

[  594.139482] ata2: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[  618.581714] ata2: softreset failed (device not ready)
[  618.587496] ata2: limiting SATA link speed to 3.0 Gbps
[  618.593517] ata2: hard resetting link
[  623.784315] ata2: softreset failed (device not ready)
[  623.790097] ata2: reset failed, giving up
[  623.794976] ata2.00: disabled

When initializing a PV of LVM, dmesg emits on port 2 (sdb):

[   35.078312] pwr_en_sata0: disabling
[   35.082529] v5.0-sata0: disabling
[   35.086556] v12.0-sata0: disabling
[   35.090860] pwr_en_sata1: disabling
[   35.095139] v5.0-sata1: disabling
[   35.099305] v12.0-sata1: disabling
[  563.444157] ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x8 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
[  563.451951] ata2.00: failed command: WRITE FPDMA QUEUED
[  563.458097] ata2.00: cmd 61/10:18:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 3 ncq dma 8192 out
                        res 40/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
[  563.474755] ata2.00: status: { DRDY }
[  563.479143] ata2: hard resetting link
[  573.509167] ata2: softreset failed (device not ready)
[  573.514952] ata2: hard resetting link
[  583.544193] ata2: softreset failed (device not ready)
[  583.549973] ata2: hard resetting link
[  593.514854] systemd-udevd[6489]: Spawned process 'ata_id --export /dev/sdb' [6490] is taking longer than 59s to complete
[  593.526532] systemd-udevd[1784]: sdb: Worker [6489] processing SEQNUM=3632 is taking a long time
[  594.139482] ata2: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[  618.581714] ata2: softreset failed (device not ready)
[  618.587496] ata2: limiting SATA link speed to 3.0 Gbps
[  618.593517] ata2: hard resetting link
[  623.784315] ata2: softreset failed (device not ready)
[  623.790097] ata2: reset failed, giving up
[  623.794976] ata2.00: disabled
[  623.798685] ata2: EH complete
[  623.802436] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#3 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_BAD_TARGET driverbyte=DRIVER_OK cmd_age=90s
[  623.812941] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#3 CDB: Write(16) 8a 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 10 00 00
[  623.822641] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0 op 0x1:(WRITE) flags 0x8800 phys_seg 2 prio class 0
[  623.849684] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#9 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_BAD_TARGET driverbyte=DRIVER_OK cmd_age=0s
[  623.860115] sd 1:0:0:0: [sdb] tag#9 CDB: Write(16) 8a 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00
[  623.869823] blk_update_request: I/O error, dev sdb, sector 0 op 0x1:(WRITE) flags 0x8800 phys_seg 32 prio class 0
[  623.885603] sdb: detected capacity change from 7814037168 to 0

So I thought I have faulty hardware, remaining after disassembly of the NAS326 and cleaning all contacts. But I gave it a last try with the stock firmware and to my surprise everything works as expected! The web GUI creates the RAID1 without hassle. SSH into it and using their smartctl I can see all SMART values for both ports, no hang an second like with your kernel and Debian, no kernel errors shown by dmesg. The stock kernel is "Linux NAS326 3.10.39 #1 Thu Apr 1 10:04:14 CST 2021 armv7l GNU/Linux"

What's going on here??? I doubt that I'm the only one who uses both ports with bhodi's kernels and a favourite distribution. So what I'm doing wrong?

One remark: Today I upgraded the kernel from 3.11 to 3.13 with bhodi's package. You have to install the DEB with dpkg and create the compressed images yourself. According to the instructions, there should be a versioned zImage inside /boot. But this image is only included inside the tarball and is not installed by the DEB package. I have to copy the zImage myself into /boot. Once again: Is it just me? Nobody else is complaining?

Thanks for the support,
Andreas