CD drive not recognized & Very slow boot process.

Question

(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

Answer 1

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)