IBM 1GByte disk (DPES 31080) crashes Slackware with 1.2.13

[Ulrich Thoenes]

Hello from Heidelberg.

In some sense my problem might touch both groups.
So please don't be bad with me if I am wrong in info.grass.user

Grass, a very good GIS system running also on linux requires handling
with sometimes big datasets. (A gziped file with 24MBytes results in
some 68MBytes unziped). When I tried to handle this files regardless
they were gziped or not I run into problems meaning that my whole
Linux System broke down. The only way out of it was to do a hardware
reset. (I know, shouldn't be done with linux).
WHat I mean with handeling is:

Copying or moving from one directory to another regardless these
directories are on the same partition / disk or not.

Un-taring a big tar file (tar -xf xxx.tar)

gezping a large .gz file (gzip -d xxx.tar.gz)

Especially in the last case the process stoped an some point resulting
in a partial ungziped file as I found out after reboot and
reorganizing the filesystem with a fsck during bootup.
Even when mounting the big 500MByte partition I some times get a
system crash.

I tried to work on both a primary partition or a logical partition on
a extended partition. The filesystem I used in both cases was ext2.
The size of the partition was in both cases about 500MByte of a 1090
Mbyte disk. (IBM DPES 31080)

The interesting thing is that I did not had similar problems when
worked on a 400MByte Partition of the same disk under DOS-Windows.
I actually did not try to handel that big files. The biggest I
handeled was som 3.5MByte. This worked without problems.

To make the storry complete I should say, that I succeded sometimes to
handel the big files just directly after switch on of my computer and
boot of Linux. I very recently had a problem with one of my power
supply kabels not giving the right contact, resulting in  some 9.8
Volts instead of 12.00 Volts. I was able to fix this problem now and
do have stable 12.0 Volts all the time.
In addition when I do some formating or some fdisk stuff I get the
following warning:

(...)
The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 1034.
This is larger than 1024, and may cause problems with some software.
(...)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Here you'll find my total organization of my four disks.

IDE drive:
/dev/hda1           1       1     723  151812+   6  DOS 16-bit >=32M
/dev/hda2         732     732     965   49140   83  Linux native
/dev/hda3   *     724     724     731    1680    a  OS/2 Boot Manager
/dev/hda4         966     966     989    5040   82  Linux swap

1st SCSI drive:
/dev/sda1           1       1     150  153584    6  DOS 16-bit >=32M
/dev/sda2         151     151     206   57344   83  Linux native

2nd SCSI drive:
/dev/sdb1           1       1     107  109552    6  DOS 16-bit >=32M
/dev/sdb2         108     108     346  244736    5  Extended
/dev/sdb3         347     347     507  164864   83  Linux native
/dev/sdb5   *     108     108     246  142320    7  OS/2 HPFS
/dev/sdb6   *     247     247     346  102384    6  DOS 16-bit >=32M

3rd SCSI drive:
/dev/sdc1           1       1     412  421872    6  DOS 16-bit >=32M
/dev/sdc2         413     413     512  102400   82  Linux swap
/dev/sdc3         514     514    1023  522240    5  Extended
/dev/sdc5         514     514    1023  522224   83  Linux native


/dev/hda1 is the DOS System drive
/dev/sdb3 is the Linux System drive
/dev/sdb5 is the OS/2 System drive

/dev/sdc2 linux swap is as big as 100MByte because of the GIS
application.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I am running Slackware 2.3 with Kernel 1.2.13

My computer is a i486DX2 66MHz.
Further components are Adaptec SCSI cont. AHA1542CF,
VL bus controler,
3rd and 4th serial high speed port
4speed cdrom plextor, SCSI
1 Speed cdrom Mitsumi (the very old one)
Soundblaster pro,
Tsengslab ET4000W32 graphic card
Connor QIC Floppy streamer

This got a long posting. However it should be complete.
I would be very thankfull for any help.

Thanks Ulli

email: ulrich.thoenes at rhein-neckar.de