[2.6.19-rc2] SATA boot problems

[Robert Wruck]

Hi,

I'm having problems booting from a SATA disk with 2.6.19-rc2.
Grub loads fine, but when the kernel boots, it *sometimes* ends up with
VFS: Cannot open root device "sda5" or unknown-block(0,0)

The strange thing is that this happens only in 2/3 of the boot attempts.
If I reset the machine, the next attempt is likely to succeed.
I first noted this when switching from 2.6.17 (2.6.17.11, IIRC) to
2.6.18 and it persists in 2.6.19-rc2 (Windows does not encounter similar
problems on the same machine).

I attached a diff of a successful and an unsuccessful netconsole log
below. It seems that the drive is sometimes simply not detected...
I'm not using an initrd and changing the kernel command line from
root=/dev/sda5 to root=0x0805 did not help.

The controller is:
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FW (ICH6/ICH6W) SATA
Controller (rev 03)

Any ideas? Please CC me, as I'm not subscribed.
Robert


 ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xEC00 ctl 0xE802 bmdma 0xDC00 irq 19
 ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xE400 ctl 0xE002 bmdma 0xDC08 irq 19
 scsi0 : ata_piix
+ata1.00: ATA-7, max UDMA/133, 312581808 sectors: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)
+ata1.00: ata1: dev 0 multi count 16
+ata1.00: configured for UDMA/133
 scsi1 : ata_piix
 ATA: abnormal status 0x7F on port 0xE407
+  Vendor: ATA       Model: Maxtor 6V160E0    Rev: VA11
+  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 05
+SCSI device sda: 312581808 512-byte hdwr sectors (160042 MB)
+sda: Write Protect is off
+SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
+SCSI device sda: 312581808 512-byte hdwr sectors (160042 MB)
+sda: Write Protect is off
+SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
+ sda: sda1 sda2 sda3 < sda5 sda6 sda7 sda8 sda9 sda10 sda11 sda12 >
+sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda
+sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
 ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:1d.7[A] -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 20
 ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: EHCI Host Controller
 ehci_hcd 0000:00:1d.7: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1

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