[Techtalk] Unknown computer error

[Linda Knapp]

Sounds like there might be some bad blocks on the partition. Have you run
fsck?

-Linda

On Mon, Apr 27, 2015 at 12:52 PM, David Sumbler <david at aeolia.co.uk> wrote:

> My computer, running Ubuntu 12.04, suddenly froze this evening.  I
> opened a LibreOffice document, but it did not display quite quickly as
> it normally does.  Instead, the window that had opened remained empty
> but greyed out.
>
> I expected it to clear within a few seconds, but it didn't.  So I tried
> closing some other programs that I had running, but they all turned grey
> and the windows refused to close.  Eventually everything seemed to
> freeze: I couldn't even get to a console using Ctrl-Alt-F1.  So I forced
> the computer to stop, and booted it again.
>
> It seemed to boot up normally, but when I tried to start  a program
> (opening Chrome in Gnome) it froze again.
>
> I did another forced stop (by holding the on-off button for several
> seconds) and booted another time.
>
> This time the desktop seemed again to be unresponsive, but I was able to
> get to a console.
>
> In the console I got the following messages repeatedly, every 3 seconds:
>
> ata 3.00: status { DRDY ERR }
> ata 3.00: error { UNC }
> ata 3.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
> ata 3.00: BMDMA stat 0x65
> ata 3.00: failed commadn: READ DMA EXT
> ata 3.00: cmd 25/00:08:68:35:55/00:00:30:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 4096 in
>           res 51/40:04:6c:35:55/40:00:30:00:00/00 Emask 0x9 (media
> error)
>
> I had just finished copying all this (by hand), when the loop
> terminated.  I now found that simple commands in the console seemed to
> work normally, and then I was able to get back to Gnome, which now seems
> to be working normally.
>
> Can somebody shed any light on the above?  Is my hard drive on the
> blink, or is it something else?
>
> David
>
>
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