[lug] SATA hotplug

[John Hernandez]

I've recently purchased an eSATA/USB2.0 external enclosure.  Naturally, 
I'm experimenting with the eSATA interface on my  Linux 2.6.18.2 
system.  This is an nVidia nForce3 chipset with onboard SATA.

The external drive works fine if it's powered on at boot.  But, if it's 
off at boot time, then I switch it on later, I see some encouraging 
output in dmesg (see below) but the device never shows up in 'fdisk -l', 
nor do I see any /dev/sdb? files.

My understanding of the libata web page is that SATA hotplug should be 
supported with this kernel & hardware combination.  Is there something 
else I need to do?

Nov 10 08:14:26 localhost kernel: [32888.403800] ata2: soft resetting port
Nov 10 08:14:33 localhost kernel: [32891.995662] ata2: port is slow to 
respond, please be patient
Nov 10 08:14:56 localhost kernel: [32903.482896] ata2: SATA link up 1.5 
Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
Nov 10 08:14:56 localhost kernel: [32903.482902] ata2: EH pending after 
completion, repeating EH (cnt=4)
Nov 10 08:14:56 localhost kernel: [32903.482908] ata2: EH complete