Re: ata: failed to IDENTIFY / SRST failed (errno = -16) problems on/after booting 2.6.35-rc3

Török Edvin
2010-07-10T09:58:14Z

2010/7/6 Robert Hancock <hancockrwd@gmail.com>:
>> Also I noticed that the BIOS sometimes hanged during boot (probably
>> trying to establish a link to the CDROM too), resetting it a couple of
>> times allowed it to reach Linux, but then Linux hanged.
>> It could be a hardware failure of the CDROM that just happened to occur
>> after I installed 2.6.35-rc3, I don't know.
>
> It does sound like a hardware problem, yes, from those symptoms.

So from the 2 CDROM drives this one works:
ata9.00: ATAPI: ASUS CRW-5232AS, 1.01, max UDMA/33

If I plug in just the other CDROM drive (on same cable/power
connector, and unplug the working CDROM) then it hangs in the BIOS
"Detecting IDE drives....". Looks like faulty hardware.

If I have both CDROMs plugged in (on same data cable, order doesn't
seem to matter) then it hangs in the BIOS for a while.
It eventually boots Linux, at which point I get those SRST failed
messages, and at some point it brings up the link to both CDROMs
(after 76 seconds for example):
ata9.00: ATAPI: ASUS CRW-5232AS, 1.0.1, max UDMA/33
ata9.01: ATAPI: SAMSUNG CD-ROM SH-152A, C503, max UDMA/33

In this case load average starts to climb (2.39 already) for a while,
I'll reply with more details in the other thread about that.

So this is not a regression, or a bug in Linux, it is just faulty
hardware and Linux retrying multiple times when it fails.

Best regards,
--Edwin