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Weird situation, looking for feedback.

Posted: 2019-11-04 08:44
by Deb-fan
The situation, have an old Dell 1545 laptop and the thing is still running great even if it's dated 10 or so years now. However encountered a really odd situation, when am booted into a 64bit install ( I have both Stretch 64bit with a custom rolled vanilla kernel) and now a Buster 64b with stock kernel and also went ahead and installed the same custom one onto it. When booted into these babies, I get some odd clicking sound. Repeats every couple secs. The hard drive is an ancient thing, 250gb Western Digital black, 7200 rpm affair.

Not really expecting it to live all that much longer anyway. Not 100% it's originating from the hdd either, though at a loss as to what else it could be. Here's the rub, when booted into 32bit-Stretch, nope ... no clicking. So this leaves me scratching my head, is it only when the thing is booted with the cpu in 64bit Op-mode ? Is it strictly later kernel's responsible and maybe should play around with some older one's on the Buster install ? Yep ... that's the plan, the 32b/Stretch has a custom rolled 4.13 version kernel on it, shrugs. At this point not really sure what else to dork with other than trying old version kernels. Just got done getting this 64bit Buster about where I want it from a minimal netinstall + standard system tools. The idea of having to bother repeating the process with a 32bit netinstall iso or trying to convert the sucker to 32bit via multiarch makes me want to swallow my tongue.

Has anyone seen this type of thing before or have any worthwhile insights/comments, thanks in advance. :) All of these are pretty much clones, all the same, config'ed and setup to my preferences and confuzzled by this situation.

PS, Also o course going to have to compare output of lsmod I guess. Weird though that Debian would drop any relevant modules/drivers 64bit or not for this old thing. Would think it'd be right up Debian stable's alley !!! :D

Re: Weird situation, looking for feedback.

Posted: 2019-11-04 11:29
by v&n
Deb-fan wrote:Has anyone seen this type of thing before..
Just sharing a similar experience -

I remember an old custom build desktop pc whose 250 GB seagate barracuda 7200 rpm got into a similar situation. The previously installed windows xp on it started crashing frequently, throwing multiple I/O errors everytime. A failing HDD being the obvious suspect, I installed Ubuntu 10.04 on it (in 2010, and the PC was already 'old' then) hoping to stretch its life a few more days (given its smaller footprint and lesser disk usage) till we could procure a new HDD. I don't remember whether I tried to 'locate' the bad region or not, but the Ubuntu installation started crashing too, even though less frequently, but quite unpredictably. With that I put that PC aside.

After a few days, on a whim, I reinstalled same Ubuntu 10.04 on it again, this time on a partition created specifically for the experiment at the 'end of the disk', and it came back to life, running rock-solid for more than a year! I had simply removed the 'bad' partitions, leaving the region unused.

It was the same infamous 'clicking' noise that HDD used to give when using the culprit partitions.

Having mentioned that story, I also remember some reported bug in pulse audio a few years ago (not more than 4-5 years) that used to give a different type of 'clicking sound' every few minutes. It wasn't quite same as that coming from a failing HDD (that one is clearly identifiable as a 'mechanical click'), but somewhat similar, and could easily confuse even an experienced user.

Now in your case, you can easily rule out the possibility of a bad HDD region using a live session of the same 64 bit OS.

Re: Weird situation, looking for feedback.

Posted: 2019-11-04 11:56
by Deb-fan
Noticed I'd already installed the 4.19 bpo kernel to that 32b/Stretch install. However the sound never occurs while booted into that OS. Only 64(Stretch and now Buster) and of course am booted into Buster now, no clicky, click !!! Did go ahead and make copies of all of their lsmod output to look over. A drive this old has to be on borrowed time, though thing isn't showing any errors and is quite responsive so going to ride it till the wheels fall off and have to replace it regardless.

Just a fun fact (and not going to bother googling up supporting links) but they've done studies and gnu/Nix is in fact much kinder to hardware, whereas M$ has shown to have a much higher premature component failure rate, personally believe this is by design. Blow out components ... people have to replace them, often will just buy a new M$ infested system vs bothering to fix a good system. Though some brands/models are just flat out known for being all around crappy and prone to failure. Discussed this in the #! forums long ago. Unfortunately such threads are now fallen to dust. RIP #! and #! forum. :(

Re: Weird situation, looking for feedback.

Posted: 2019-11-04 13:35
by trinidad
Just a fun fact (and not going to bother googling up supporting links) but they've done studies and gnu/Nix is in fact much kinder to hardware, whereas M$ has shown to have a much higher premature component failure rate
True fact. Windows constantly moves files around on the drive, whatever type it is, and de-fragging should be set to daily on their file systems on bigger systems, and that only adds to the issue. A windows system that has followed the upgrade path from windows 7 to a currently updated Windows 10 system will have a file system 10 times as big or more than a brand new OEM Windows 10 machine of the same build.

TC

Re: Weird situation, looking for feedback.

Posted: 2019-11-06 20:46
by Deb-fan
^ Hey no worries. M$ and window$ is of no concern to me. Quit using anything window$ several years ago now and funny thing, haven't had a single BSOD or M$ inflicted techno-hassle since. :D Yeppers a real puzzle how that works. Stop using a crappy OS/platform, designed by greedy, scumbaggy, crappy mega-Corps sleazeballs and a persons tech life gets so much better, instantaneously. Lmao, whod've thunk it ?

OT: Am fairly certain the hdd is likely to fail within a period of time. Still working great, odd it never does the clicky thing when booted into a 32b/Stretch, only when in 64b Op-mode on a Stretch clone and now Buster too !??!?!