Red Hat Knowledgebase

Release Found: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 AS Update 2 or lower.

Symptom: Extended use of the CD-ROM or floppy drive on the IBM Bladecenter chasis results in a high number of I/O errors. Commands such as dd and cp sometimes fail.

Solution:
The CD-ROM and floppy on the Bladecenter chasis is USB. There is a known bug affecting the usb-storage and usb-ohci kernel modules in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 Update 2 and lower.

The solution is to upgrade the kernel from Update 3 or higher for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1.

If, for some reason, it is not possible to upgrade the kernel, the following workarounds can be implemented:

• Boot the system with a uni-processor kernel.
  
  
• Disable hyper-threading in either the system BIOS or by passing the "noht" parameter to the kernel.
  
  
• Use an alternate method such as NFS to copy files to the system.
  
  
• Unmount then remount the USB device. Try the copy process again.
  
  

Red Hat has also issued a statement about this problem on the Hardware Compatibility List

Note: The link provided should not have a #38 in it:
http://hardware.redhat.com/hcl/?pagename=details&hid=5054