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Debian: dmesg USB disk DID_ERROR/DRIVER_SENSE

Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2019 12:46 am
by ^rooker
[PROBLEM]

On Debian 8.6 (Jessie), I get the following error messages in syslog/dmesg:
[Fri Apr 5 20:26:22 2019] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_ERROR driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[Fri Apr 5 20:26:22 2019] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] tag#0 Sense Key : Hardware Error [current] [descriptor]
[Fri Apr 5 20:26:22 2019] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] tag#0 Add. Sense: No additional sense information
[Fri Apr 5 20:26:22 2019] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] tag#0 CDB: ATA command pass through(16) 85 06 2c 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 e5 00
[Fri Apr 5 20:26:22 2019] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] tag#0 FAILED Result: hostbyte=DID_ERROR driverbyte=DRIVER_SENSE
[Fri Apr 5 20:26:22 2019] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] tag#0 Sense Key : Hardware Error [current] [descriptor]
[Fri Apr 5 20:26:22 2019] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] tag#0 Add. Sense: No additional sense information
[Fri Apr 5 20:26:22 2019] sd 9:0:0:0: [sdh] tag#0 CDB: ATA command pass through(16) 85 06 2c 00 da 00 00 00 00 00 4f 00 c2 00 b0 00
At first my heart stopped, as these are external USB harddrives used for backups! :shock:
...but there's a time pattern:
The message appears every hour at 26/56 minutes

[SOLUTION]
Then I found this answer by Colin Ian King:
I believe from what I understand from this fix and the errors being seen is that ATA pass-through commands with opcodes 0x85 "ATA command pass through(16)" and 0xa1 "ATA command pass through(12)/Blank" are being now (possibly erroneously) issued and hence causing these error messages.

Looking at the ATA pass-through command data, it looks like a SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) ATA command is being issued (command code 0xb0), I'm speculating perhaps this H/W is not able to handle this.
My kernel's version is:
Linux 4.4.19-1-pve #1 SMP Wed Sep 14 14:33:50 CEST 2016 x86_64 GNU/Linux
I'm going to update this system soon to Debian 9 (Stretch) anyways, and I'll report if the error messages are gone with a more recent kernel.
Thanks Colin for saving me from a heart attack :D