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#1 2012-10-19 01:31:48

Tempest
Member
Registered: 2011-08-01
Posts: 22

[Solved] Kernel update broke IDE/PATA? Arch won't boot from IDE drive

I have a machine running Arch with several SATA drives in RAID, but with an IDE/PATA system drive.  The IDE drive contains the boot, root, and swap partitions (there is no home partition on this machine).  I hadn't restarted it in a while, and I restarted it this morning due to something totally unrelated, and it will no longer boot.

After hours of troubleshooting, I decided to just do a fresh install (for example, I was still using grub legacy - the new install uses syslinux).  Still no dice.

It's not the hard drive's fault - the hard drive works fine.  If I use the Arch Linux install ISO (burned onto a CD) it boots fine and recognizes the system drive, and everything is dandy.  I can even boot with SystemRescueCD (based on Gentoo, on the 3.0.21 kernel) and use that to chroot and execute the init system on my Arch install.

But I can't get the 3.6.2 (current) kernel to boot it.  It fails with "Waiting 10 seconds for device /dev/sda2" and then "ERROR: Unable to find root device /dev/sda2."  It continues to drop me into a recovery shell, where I can see that the system drive is nowhere to be found in the /dev folder.

Things I have tried which have not worked (note:  I have not tried all combinations of these):

* Using the 'ide' hook instead of the 'pata' hook and rebuilding initcpio.  I'm currently using the 'ide' hook, but I can switch back to the more "modern" pata one if needed.
* Unplugging the other IDE device on the cable (the CD drive).
* Changing the IDE control mode from IDE to AHCI (?) in the BIOS (I have since changed it back).
* Adding the ide_core.chs=4.0 kernel parameter to the boot line in syslinux.

As a reminder, the drive seems to work fine.  At least, it was detected by the installer, successfully mounted, and successfully written to and read from.

Any ideas on what's wrong?  Do I need to downgrade the kernel?  How do I do that from a fresh install?

Last edited by Tempest (2012-10-19 19:13:35)

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#2 2012-10-19 14:18:17

Yggdrasil
Member
Registered: 2009-07-21
Posts: 37

Re: [Solved] Kernel update broke IDE/PATA? Arch won't boot from IDE drive

Same here, but no raid. Kernel said something like "ata ... errno=-19", or so (sorry for not saving it). I'm afraid, i'm a noob when it comes to drives stuff and init ramdisk, so you have to help me if you need more info.

I just had some real fun downgrading the kernel which solved the problem for me. What i basically did (on i686):
1. get linux and linux-headers packages from here:
http://arm.konnichi.com/2012/10/15/core/os/i686/
2. copy packages on the system
3. chroot into it
4. install them with pacman -U

EDIT: Just found this thread:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=150570

Haven't tried it as i had already enough fun for today.

Last edited by Yggdrasil (2012-10-19 14:22:19)

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#3 2012-10-19 19:12:59

Tempest
Member
Registered: 2011-08-01
Posts: 22

Re: [Solved] Kernel update broke IDE/PATA? Arch won't boot from IDE drive

I can confirm that adding the kernel parameter "modprobe.blacklist=pata_acpi" works.  I'm marking this thread closed.  Thanks for that link!

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#4 2012-10-19 22:28:27

falconindy
Developer
From: New York, USA
Registered: 2009-10-22
Posts: 4,111
Website

Re: [Solved] Kernel update broke IDE/PATA? Arch won't boot from IDE drive

The 'ide' hook doesn't do anything unless you're using linux-lts. We removed the entire legacy IDE subsystem quite some time ago.

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#5 2012-10-19 22:56:00

Squiddles
Member
Registered: 2011-05-31
Posts: 73

Re: [Solved] Kernel update broke IDE/PATA? Arch won't boot from IDE drive

Tempest wrote:

I can confirm that adding the kernel parameter "modprobe.blacklist=pata_acpi" works.  I'm marking this thread closed.  Thanks for that link!

This worked for me as well with root on a SATA drive. Mine would boot normally every other boot though.

Now, I've no idea what I'm getting into here so excuse my ignorance: Does this mean I should remove the 'pata' hook and recompile the kernel? Or is this a different issue?

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#6 2012-10-20 15:27:13

Yggdrasil
Member
Registered: 2009-07-21
Posts: 37

Re: [Solved] Kernel update broke IDE/PATA? Arch won't boot from IDE drive

I just looked it up and my root is using SATA too. I can confirm that removing pata (and scsi) from HOOKS in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf solves the problem too, without any blacklisting.

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#7 2012-10-22 02:38:55

newtonelectron
Member
Registered: 2012-03-29
Posts: 30

Re: [Solved] Kernel update broke IDE/PATA? Arch won't boot from IDE drive

I can confirm this 'fix' also. Remove 'pata' in your HOOKS in mkinitcpio.conf  and run mkinitcpio -p linux

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