Hi, thanks for the reply. :)
Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz wrote:
Hi,
On Monday 12 November 2007, Andrew Morton wrote:
On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:22:41 +0100 Jonas Stare <jonas.stare@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi.
This week I ran into a strange hardware problem. During boot I got a 35
second delay while waiting for IDE-disks that weren't there to report
With what chipset and host driver does this happen?
I am not sure about the chip-set but I think it was vt82c686b. It used
the via82cxxx-driver, but only _after_ using the generic ide-code to
probe/wait (a long time) for the disks. (This was in Suse 10.1 SP 1.)
that they were not in a BSY state. The problem was most likely in the
hardware but this patch enables you to ignore waiting for disks by
setting hdX=noprobe (and not setting the geometry by hand) as a kernel
option.
If no noprobe-option is set the code will work (more or less) as the
original but if set the code will skip the ide_wait_not_busy() for that
drive. Even if there would be a drive there and it is still BSY
afterwards it should not matter since it isn't probed for later.
There are other ways to get around the "35-seconds-of-waiting-in-vain",
like actually fix the hardware, insert a second drive that works or
recompile the kernel with edd-support builtin (atleast I've seen that
solution on a forum) and possibly others. But this patch would allow
people to get Linux to boot quickly on wonky hardware without having to
recompile anything.
(The code also honors the MAX_DRIVES variable instead of assuming that
ther will be 2 drives on the bus.)
I keep on hearing about problems with boot-time IDE probing. It's public
enemy #1 with the embedded guys.
The problem is that we are not hearing about them.
Please forward the reports to linux-ide@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
It does seem that operator intervention is needed in some fashion.
I will be happy for all the comments I can get. :) But be gentle, this
is my first patch...
Jonas, could you also put printk() dumping content of 'stat' in
ide-iops.c::ide_wait_not_busy() so we can verify that it is not
some problem with ide_wait_not_busy() itself.
Sorry. :( I don't have access to the hardware anymore (which is a
"home-made" embedded machine). But from what I could get from poking
around was that the BSY-bit on the slave (that never has or ever will
exists) was set, probably because those who built the thing wanted to
save money and/or space on that "billionth of a cent"-resistor that Alan
Cox talked about.
Best regards
Jonas Stare
Signed-off-by: Jonas Stare <jonas.stare@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
--
diff -u linux-2.6.23.1-orig/drivers/ide/ide-probe.c
linux-2.6.23.1/drivers/ide/ide-probe.c
--- linux-2.6.23.1-orig/drivers/ide/ide-probe.c 2007-10-12
18:43:44.000000000 +0200
+++ linux-2.6.23.1/drivers/ide/ide-probe.c 2007-11-09
10:43:16.000000000 +0100
@@ -643,6 +643,7 @@
static int wait_hwif_ready(ide_hwif_t *hwif)
{
int rc;
+ int unit;
printk(KERN_DEBUG "Probing IDE interface %s...\n", hwif->name);
@@ -659,20 +660,24 @@
return rc;
Hmm, so the first ide_wait_not_busy() (for the currently
selected device) is OK and doesn't stall?
It didn't stall for me... But even if it had, probe_hwif() will ignore
the entire controller if you set "idex=noprobe".
(From drivers/ide/ide-probe.c)
static void probe_hwif(ide_hwif_t *hwif, void (*fixup)(ide_hwif_t *hwif))
{
unsigned int unit;
unsigned long flags;
unsigned int irqd;
if (hwif->noprobe)
return;
/* Now make sure both master & slave are ready */
- SELECT_DRIVE(&hwif->drives[0]);
- hwif->OUTB(8, hwif->io_ports[IDE_CONTROL_OFFSET]);
- mdelay(2);
- rc = ide_wait_not_busy(hwif, 35000);
- if (rc)
- return rc;
- SELECT_DRIVE(&hwif->drives[1]);
- hwif->OUTB(8, hwif->io_ports[IDE_CONTROL_OFFSET]);
- mdelay(2);
- rc = ide_wait_not_busy(hwif, 35000);
+ for (unit = 0; unit < MAX_DRIVES; ++unit) {
+ /* Ignore disks that we will not probe for later. */
+ if (!hwif->drives[unit].noprobe ||
+ hwif->drives[unit].forced_geom) {
It is better to check for ->present
(->forced_geom implies that ->present is set).
Great comment. :) I'll change that right away...
+ SELECT_DRIVE(&hwif->drives[unit]);
+ hwif->OUTB(8, hwif->io_ports[IDE_CONTROL_OFFSET]);
+ mdelay(2);
+ rc = ide_wait_not_busy(hwif, 35000);
+ /* Exit function with master selected (let's be
sane) */
+ SELECT_DRIVE(&hwif->drives[0]);
This changes the previous behavior adding an extra SELECT_DRIVE()
before trying the slave drive.
Mmmm, yes, I know. But I couldn't come up with a clean and nice way to
be sure that the first drive is selected. Maybe I could move it inside
the if-statement below?
+ if (rc)
+ return rc;
+ } else {
+ printk(KERN_DEBUG "Skip ide_wait_not_busy for
%s:%d\n",
+ hwif->name, unit);
+ }
+ }
- /* Exit function with master reselected (let's be sane) */
- SELECT_DRIVE(&hwif->drives[0]);
-
return rc;
}
Maybe that's the fix, maybe not - I'll defer to others on that (please).
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