ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient...

[Calimero]

Hi,

I'm running Xubuntu 10.10 on a T43 (2668-f3g), and I'm getting the following during boot:

Code: Select all

 
[    0.751651] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x1f0 ctl 0x3f6 bmdma 0x18c0 irq 14
[    5.764022] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[   10.804021] ata1: device not ready (errno=-16), forcing hardreset
[   16.000020] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[   20.816025] ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[   26.012021] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[   30.828022] ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[   36.024023] ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
[   65.872030] ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[   70.900022] ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16)
[   70.900024] ata1: reset failed, giving up

As you can see, it hangs for about 70 seconds during startup.
I'm using a Seagate Momentus 5400.5 160gb SATA drive in the ultrabay, but this shows up as ata2:

Code: Select all

[    0.751654] ata2: PATA max UDMA/100 cmd 0x170 ctl 0x376 bmdma 0x18c8 irq 15
[    0.916797] ata2.00: ATA-8: ST9160310AS, LV5C, max UDMA/100
[    0.916800] ata2.00: 312581808 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)
[    0.932674] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/100

The IDE bay under the fingerprint reader has nothing in it, so I can't think of what ata1 could be, or what the overall problem could be...

Anybody know of a fix for this?

Thanks,

Calimero

[ozzymud]

from general linux answers on the net...

one person with a Dell and this error fixed it with a warrentied drive from Dell

another person forced SATA I mode,,, "options libata force=1.5Gbps" in modprobe.d. (again, having to slow a drive down reads failure to me)

on the bright side, another user switched FROM xfs back to ext3 and it cured it for him (drives were working fine in other flavors of linux and in windows before the filesys change)

There is apparently lots of people with this error and different kernal versions, different flavors of linux, different hard drive models... I would be hard to say exactly what your particular issue is... Have you tried booting a live cd from another flavor of Linux to see if the problem persists? That's always been one of my 1st diagnostic steps for "wierd" issues... see if it is me or the distro.

So i would broaden your search to not just ThinkPads...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sour ... ady%3D0%29

[Calimero]

Hi, thanks for the reply.

I tried a while ago to boot a live distro with the hard drive removed altogether from the ultrabay, and the problem persisted (I tried Zenwalk, (X)Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04, and a Gentoo minimal live disc, along with TinyCore and Mepis ). Also, I'm using Ext4 (was using ext3 with Gentoo with an ext2 boot partition).

I'm trying this at the moment: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... omments/25

Will report back when done...,

Thanks again,

Calimero

[Calimero]

Nope - no change

[ozzymud]

You mentioned Ultrabay, and the drive under the fingerprint reader... is there a hard disk at all in the machine when you get the error (even outside the machine via usb)? I noted some people with this error when using external USB drives even...

The IDE bay under the fingerprint reader has nothing in it, so I can't think of what ata1 could be, or what the overall problem could be...

without seeing the machine, if there is a drive there... i would guess it to be ata1 with the ultrabay being the secondary (i.e. ata2 as you pointed out), but with nothing in it... i would be at a loss too... unless the BIOS is still thinking something is there through some setting??

I don't own nor have I owned a T43... but is there a bios reset/initialize in there? might try that, reset the bios.

Sorry i'm not more help, but one thing i like about forums is the "think tank" mentality

[Calimero]

Well I booted off a usb stick when I booted into the live distros, but there were no hard drives in the laptop at the time. I've got a dvd drive for the ultrabay so I'll try booting off that too when I get home...

Currently compiling a newer kernel from source...

[Edit]

Unfortunately, there aren't any settings in the BIOS for storage devices except the boot order settings.

[ozzymud]

Hrm, the usb stick when booted from IS technically a hard disk, or at least they list that way from the bios boot menu when selecting what device to boot from... lemme know how it goes with the ultrabay CD

[Kristian-770]

I had this error on a machine (a Thinkcentre, actually) and it turned out the problem was that the cable was not properly attached - so check for "dumb" hardware errors.