Bug#515201: linux-image: sata drive connected via marvell controller crashes

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Hi Eduardo,

egross@bol.com.br wrote:

> I am pleased to help with this. But I never reported something like
> that. If I copy our messages and send them to people at
> bugzilla.kernel.org would that be okay? Because I do not know
> programming language, and your formulation may be better understood
> than any try I would make in reproducing it.

Ah, sorry for the lack of clarity.  I would suggest describing the
symptoms (attaching a full dmesg if possible) and saying something
like "see http://bugs.debian.org/515201 for some armchair analysis" at
the end.

To summarize, as far as I can tell:

 - this is a bug in the "pata_marvell" driver

 - the "ahci" driver also knows how to work with these controllers,
   and a good workaround for systems with no PATA drives is to ask
   that driver to claim the device, using the marvell_enable option

 - the "ahci" driver seems to be better maintained, which is why I
   suggested that enhancing it to completely supersede pata_marvell
   might be a good way to go.  Of course, another possibility is to
   fix pata_marvell.  Upstream will know what to do.

Cheers,
Jonathan