Arch Linux

frivoal

Member

Registered: 2007-04-02

Posts: 5

CD drive not recognized & Very slow boot process.

(I posted this in the newbie forum, but got no answer, so I give it another go)

Hi all,

After a few years alternating between gentoo and debian, feeling they were ok, but not exactly what I wanted, I found Arch, and now I am happy. It feels just right. I am still very new, but I am already quite sure I'll settle here.

But happyness and warm feelings asides, I have a 2 problems I'd like to get some help about.

problem 1: my CD drive is not recognized. my hard drive and its partitions show up correctly, but I don't get a cd drive.

problem 2: On the boot process, a lot of time (2 minutes or so) is spend scanning the ATA bus. relevant messages are as follow (plus a few lines before and after just to give context)
Code:

Freeing unused kernel memory: 256k freed
Time: acpi_pm clocksource has been installed.
ACPI: Unable to derive IRQ for device 0000:00:10.0
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:10.0[A]: no GSI
ata1: PATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x1F0 ctl 0x3F6 bmdma 0x2000 irq 14
ata2: PATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x170 ctl 0x376 bmdma 0x2008 irq 15
scsi0 : pata_ali
ata1.00: ATA-5, max UDMA/100, 78140160 sectors: LBA
ata1.00: ata1: dev 0 multi count 16
ata1.00: configured for UDMA/100
scsi1 : pata_ali
ata2.00: ATAPI, max UDMA/33
ata2.00: configured for UDMA/33
scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ATA      IC25N040ATCS04-0 CA4O PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
res 40/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
ata2: port is slow to respond, please be patient (Status 0xd0)
ata2: soft resetting port
ata2.00: model number mismatch 'QSI CD-RW/DVD-ROM SBW-241' != ''
ata2.00: disabled
ata2: soft resetting port
ata2.00: ATAPI, max UDMA/33
ata2.00: configured for UDMA/33
ata2: EH complete
res 40/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
ata2: port is slow to respond, please be patient (Status 0xd0)
ata2: soft resetting port
ata2.00: configured for UDMA/33
ata2: EH complete
res 40/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
ata2: port is slow to respond, please be patient (Status 0xd0)
ata2: soft resetting port
ata2.00: configured for UDMA/33
ata2: EH complete
res 40/00:00:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
ata2: port is slow to respond, please be patient (Status 0xd0)
ata2: soft resetting port
ata2.00: configured for UDMA/33
ata2: EH complete
usbcore: registered new interface driver usbfs
usbcore: registered new interface driver hub
usbcore: registered new device driver usb

problem 2 and 3 are probably related, and linked to the new pata system in the kernel, but I don't really know anything about it, and my understanding of the mkinitcpio is very very limited. here is mine anyway, comments stripped.

Code:

MODULES="pata_ali"
BINARIES=""
FILES=""
HOOKS="base udev autodetect pata usbinput keymap filesystems"

I had it with
Code:

MODULES="pata_ali ata_generic"

and with scsi in the HOOKS as the result of the install, but the behavior was exactly the same.

Oh, and the machine I am using is a 4 year old laptop. Nothing in there is scsi or sata.

I hope anyone can help me with those.

Thanks

Malakin

Member

From: Chile

Registered: 2007-04-29

Posts: 36

Website

Re: CD drive not recognized & Very slow boot process.

Hi, I'm a "newbie" too. Coming from Gentoo/Debian. Installed Arch this week and I think it could be just the distro I have been looking for.

I too had the same problem and think it's related to the pata modules. ¿Did you have to use the legacy-ide option when installing from the CD? I'm using old hardware (4 year old laptop) and had the same symptoms you are describing. I exchanged pata with ide in mkinitcpio.conf. My MODULES and HOOKS looks like this:

MODULES="ide_disk ata_generic"
HOOKS="base udev autodetect ide keymap filesystems" (deleted scsi and sata also because I don't think I need them).

Then run mkinitcpio.

I also had to change my device names in /etc/fstab from:

/dev/sda2 / ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/sda5 swap swap defaults 0 0

to:

/dev/hda2 / ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0

And finally /boot/grub/menu.lst from:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda2 ro

to

kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/hda2 ro

¿Any experienced user can confirm that I'm doing the right thing? I didn't find documentation in the wiki for old systems. Only the mention of an ide-legacy option.

Hope it helps.

Last edited by Malakin (2007-04-29 02:29:31)

rayjgu3

Member

From: Chicago IL usa

Registered: 2004-07-04

Posts: 695

Re: CD drive not recognized & Very slow boot process.

well Malakin
i been an arch user for years & what you explained rather well is exactly what i would do
with exception id put module for filesystem in MODULES="ext3 reiser xfs (whatever)" & take out the HOOKS="filesystem"
also
mkinitcpio -M =will list modules that are required to boot + a few more pick the ones you need
mkinitcpio -g /boot/kernel26-CUSTOM.img  will generate init.img from what you have in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

i recomend the CUSTOM.img to whatever you want to name it just generate something with diffrent name to not overwrite current
than adjust your boot loader to reflect initd name.img
this is all explained in detail here
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Con … mkinitcpio

once you got that straightened out there are a few threads here bout speeding up the boot proces