Solutions Log » Operating Systems

The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period

Dan — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 16:38:21 +0000

Issue:
After an updated release of Intel's Matrix Storage Manager [v.8.9.0.1023] and chipset drivers for Windows, you experience unexpected system timeouts, lockups, pausing, or freezing. The following event is recorded in the System event log:

Log Name: System
Source: iaStor
EventID: 9
Level: Error
The device, \Device\Ide\iaStor0, did not respond within the timeout period.

Cause:
The issue is the result of Aggressive Link State Power Management (ALPM) on the PCI-Express bus negotiating a lower power state for the link between the controller and disk when there is no activity. When ALPM works, disk requests are queued, the serial link revived, and the queued requests are sent to the relevant disk; this requires a disk that supports ALPM.

Resolution:
Modify the advanced settings of your active power management scheme in Windows to turn PCI Express Link State Power Management off.

Commentary:
Searching for a solution yielded a number of possibilities.

Setting the value of:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaSTOR\Parameters\PortN\LPMDSTATE 0

as discussed by Derek Seaman did not resolve my issue.

Renaming:

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaSTOR\Parameters

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\iaSTOR\Parameters.dist

as suggested by Paul's Computer Service was also ineffective. At the time I was running the latest set of drivers for my platform. Caveat emptor: the solution I outlined in this article worked for me.

References:
Intel CS-025783 - Possible issues with Windows Vista* and Intel® RAID
Windows 7 Intel SATA/AHCI Lockups
Intel® Matrix Storage Manager Bug

Acronis True Image Home 2010 Freezes During Backup on Windows 7

Dan — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 17:02:15 +0000

Issue:
When running backup jobs in Acronis True Image Home 2010 under Windows Vista or Windows 7, the backup job appears to stall and the operating system becomes unresponsive. The system will encounter a bugcheck condition and recover with an unclean shutdown.

Cause:
From Acronis:

Because of the latest major changes in Windows Vista and Windows 7 native snapshot driver (VolSnap), there were some modifications introduced in Acronis True Image Home 2010 (starting from Build 6029). The Acronis native snapshot driver (snapman) was moved from UpperFilters to LowerFilters to avoid conflicts with VolSnap (which could have lead to backups failure or data corruption in backups). This change may sometimes manifest itself in a freezing Windows Vista or Windows 7 operating system on machines with rare software and hardware configurations.

Resolution:
Download an updated SnapAPI build from Acronis. Unpack it and install with the Disable Logging option set. See Acronis KB6529 for the appropriate link.

Commentary: My hardware configuration is not esoteric; my software configuration is equally banal: an Intel Core i7 X58 system with 6GB of RAM, RAID1 on an ICH10R, and Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.

Reference: http://kb.acronis.com/content/6529

xinetd per_source limit issues

Dan — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:32:34 +0000

Issue:
Users note availability issues when accessing services backed by xinetd (subversion, rsync, etc.)

Identification:
Syslog on the affected server will present multiple lines containing daemon per_source_limit for 0.0.0.0.

Cause:
You have exceeded per_source_limit defaults imposed by your xinetd configuration. Many distributions include per_source limits that may not be suitable for your use case. Evaluate your needs carefully.

Resolution:
Modify the default setting for per_source in /etc/xinetd.conf or modify the service specific configuration (recommended) under /etc/xinet.d. per_source limits may be set as follows:

per_source = 10

per_source may be set to an integer or UNLIMITED (the number represents the number of connections allowed per host). A sensible fixed value is always better than UNLIMITED.

Reference: xinetd.conf(5)

Reset The Windows Update Catalog

Dan — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:43:37 +0000

Insert the Windows Vista installation disc in the disc drive, and then restart the computer.
When you are prompted to restart from the disc, press any key.
When you are prompted, configure the Language to install, Time and currency format , and Keyboard or input method options that you want, and then click Next .
On the Install Windows page, click Repair your computer .
On the System Recovery Options page, click the version of the Windows Vista operating system that you want to repair, and then click Next
On the System Recovery Options page, click Command Prompt .
Type cd C:\windows\winsxs , and then press ENTER.
Type ren pending.xml pending.old , and then press ENTER.
In Registry Editor, locate and then delete the following registry subkey:

HLKM\Offline Components\AdvancedInstallersNeedResolving
HKLM\Offline Components\PendingXmlIdentifier
HKLM\Offline Components\NextQueueEntryIndex

At the command prompt, type exit to exit Registry Editor. Press ENTER.
Click Restart

Reference: http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vistawu/thread/13dec2a0-2694-4b11-9b0c-9b8fbe6162ee

Replace Pipes with Tabs in a Delimited File

Dan — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:44:37 +0000

Issue:
It is often necessary to replace delimiters in a file with a form the receiving party expects. sed is my favorite method of meeting the need.

Solution:
Replace double pipes with tabs

sed 's/||/ /g' file.in > file.out

Note: If you find the tab key simply does not work, try CTRL+V+I from your terminal.
Reference: http://forums.devshed.com/unix-help-35/replacing-tabs-with-spaces-372623.html

Caveats:
Special consideration (and a regex) will be required for data where delimiters are present in the data itself. Consider your use case and apply appropriately.

Remove a Range of Unwanted ZFS Snapshots from the Command Line

Dan — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 05:51:41 +0000

Remove a range of unwanted snapshots, from the command line, if necessary.
In the following example, all automatic snapshots in the bash shell are removed.

for s in $(zfs list -H -o name -t snapshot | grep @zfs-auto-snap); do zfs destroy $s; done

One could add a secondary pipe and grep statement to filter on individual file systems.

Reference: How to Manage the Automatic ZFS Snapshot Service

Disable X in OpenSolaris

Dan — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 03:18:46 +0000

From the shell

pfexec svcadm disable gdm

Create a pidof command to find PID numbers easily

Dan — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:30:44 +0000

Most UNIX environments include the pidof command which is put to use whenever one needs to quickly determine, by name, the pid of a running program. Apple's Mac OS X lacks the pidof command, however, one may approximate its function with the following shell script:

#!/bin/sh
ps axc|awk "{if (\$5==\"$1\") print \$1}";

Save the script as /bin/pidof and be sure to set its executable bit:

chmod a+x /bin/pidof

Strip empty (null) lines from a file

Dan — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:12:06 +0000

sed meets the need; the recipe follows:

sed '/^$/d' filename

Disable Spotlight in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Dan — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:22:06 +0000

On occasion I need to process large volumes of text locally. Spotlight dutifully attempts to index this data, bringing my system to a crawl.

Proactively disabling Spotlight is a sure way to avoid such issues and here is how to do it:

Disabling Spotlight in Snow Leopard is pretty easy, launch the Terminal and type the following command:

sudo mdutil -a -i off

This tells the Spotlight manager to disable all indexing on all volumes, the command will require your administrative password to execute.

Re-enabling Spotlight in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is just as easy, just reverse the command to:

sudo mdutil -a -i on

Now Spotlight indexing will be back on and work as usual.

NOTE: mds and mdsworker will persist in the process table; this is normal.