Bug#583390: Hangs with "ata frozen" on boot

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Hi Adrian,

Sorry for the long silence.

Adrian Lang wrote:

> Version: 2.6.32-13
[...]
> After "Loading, please wait...", linux hangs for 30 seconds. after that, it logs:
> ----
> ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
> ata1.00: cmd a0/01:00:00:80:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 0 dma 16512 in
>          res 40/00:03:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/a0 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
> ata1.00: status: { DRDY }
> ----
> These messages are repeated after 40 seconds, and again 40 seconds.
>
> linux-image-2.6.32-3-686 works

Interesting.  Do current squeeze or sid kernels behave this way,
too?  (To test a sid kernel, the only other packages from outside
squeeze you should need are initramfs-tools and linux-base.)

If this is reproducible using a 3.1.y kernel from sid, we can get
help from upstream.  And if it isn't, that information could help in
finding the fix.