[lug] ata drive problem on boot

[Nate Duehr]

On Dec 13, 2007, at 11:56 AM, gordongoldin at aim.com wrote:

> ata1.00: failed to set xfermode (err_mask=0x4)
>


A little Googling seems to indicate that this was happening to someone  
on the kernel list clear back into 2005.  There was discussion that  
the errors encountered at that time were an indication that things  
were still "working" but even Linus himself said something along the  
lines of, "We're getting interrupts when we're in a place in the code  
where we think we've turned them off."  Or something like that.

Didn't look like they ever nailed it down.  Perhaps whatever kernel  
code has come along for the ride clear into 2007 without a real fix.

More Googling revealed this tidbit:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=417181

Which seems to indicate that if you boot your kernel with the  
"irqpoll" flag set, the problem goes away but could cause performance  
problems.

YMMV,

--
Nate Duehr
nate at natetech.com