# Boot hangs for about 15 seconds when looking for ata_piix

## Jessehk

I just recently installed Gentoo (it was a lot of fun, believe it or not), and everything works great. The one exception is that during the boot-up process, it suddenly stops while it's searching for "ata_piix". I used genkernel to build a generic kernel, so I'm not quite sure what it is or how to solve the problem. 

For all I know, it might just be taking a long time to locate it (or something). The problem is, that once is done, the text zooms by so fast that I cannot see 

the end result. 

My information:

kenerl   : kernel-genkernenl-x8-2.6.18-gentoo-r4

initfamfs: iniramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.18-gentoo-r4

Any help would be appreciated.  :Smile: 

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## NeddySeagoon

Jessehk,

Can you post your lspci output please ?

I would hate to tell you to remove it from your kernel if you actually need it

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## wynn

 *Jessehk wrote:*   

> The one exception is that during the boot-up process, it suddenly stops while it's searching for "ata_piix".
> 
> For all I know, it might just be taking a long time to locate it (or something). 

 This might just be ânormalâ behaviour.

An AMD64 box here has done the same since birth: it has a DVD-ROM and used to have a CD-RW and always pauses for 25 seconds when it gets to the DVD-ROM. The CD-RW has been replaced by a DVD-RW and both -ROM and -RW are ATA-66.

Now it is running 2.6.19-gentoo-r2 and it gets to the DVD-ROM at ~25 seconds, at ~33 seconds it apologizes "ata3 is slow to respond" and then (after its customary coffee and danish with its friend) continues at ~50 seconds.

Another AMD64 used to behave in the same way but it has a DVD-ROM which is ATA-33 and a DVD-RW which is ATA-66 and they were master and slave on the same IDE port. Moving the DVD-RW to the other IDE port, however, solved that problem and there is no longer a pause.

OT: oddly enough the first AMD64 (socket 754) runs with the new PATA drivers in 2.6.19 but the other one (socket 939) doesn't.

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## NeddySeagoon

wynn,

What is an AMD based box doing with Intel drivers in its kernel?

If its PIIX driver related, rip out that driver. It will be waiting for its timeout when it can't find any hardware to talk to.

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## wynn

Sorry, my fault. I should have made clear that I was talking about PATA_VIA (socket 754) and VIA82CXXX chipset support (socket 939).

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## NeddySeagoon

wynn,

The kernel driver will check both IDE buses, if one is empty, it has to wait for a timeout.

There is a kernel option to tell it not to check the empty IDE cable.

Look in /usr/src/linux/Documentation at kernel-params.txt or ide.txt, I don't recall which file its in.

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## Jessehk

Thanks for the reply. I will post the output of lspci as soon as I'm done emerging gnome.  :Smile: 

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## Gentree

 *Jessehk wrote:*   

> Thanks for the reply. I will post the output of lspci as soon as I'm done emerging gnome. 

 

Huh? Is it you thank cant chew gum and walk or your gentoo box?  :Wink: 

open a terminal , type lspci and post .... emerge wont stop you doing that.  :Cool: 

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## Jessehk

I'm using a separate computer until gnome is done (and I don't have another WM installed), so it involves typing everything out (unless I'm missing something...).  :Smile: 

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## dsd

Jessehk: this should be fixed in gentoo-sources-2.6.18-r5, no other modifications needed

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## Jessehk

I love getting responses from developers. :p

So dsd, you're saying I shouldn't do anything, and just wait untill the next gentoo-sources?

Just in case, here's the output of lspci:

```

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82865G/PE/P DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface (rev 02)

00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82865G/PE/P PCI to AGP Controller (rev 02)

00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)

00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)

00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)

00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)

00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev c2)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)

00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) IDE Controller (rev 02)

00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801EB (ICH5) SATA Controller (rev 02)

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) SMBus Controller (rev 02)

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] (rev a1)

02:00.0 Network controller: Intersil Corporation Prism 2.5 Wavelan chipset (rev 01)

02:01.0 Modem: Intel Corporation FA82537EP 56K V.92 Data/Fax Modem PCI (rev 04)

02:02.0 Multimedia audio controller: Creative Labs [SB Live! Value] EMU10k1X

02:02.1 Input device controller: Creative Labs [SB Live! Value] Input device controller

02:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82562EZ 10/100 Ethernet Controller (rev 02)

```

 :Smile: 

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## NeddySeagoon

Jessehk,

You need that PIIX driver - its for your Intel chip set.

Do as dsd says - get a new kernel

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## Gentree

```
bash-3.2#etcat -v gentoo-sources

[ Results for search key           : gentoo-sources ]

[ Candidate applications found : 14 ]

 Only printing found installed programs.

*  sys-kernel/gentoo-sources :

        [   ] 2.4.32-r7 (2.4.32-r7)

        [   ] 2.6.15-r1 (2.6.15-r1)

        [   ] 2.6.16-r13 (2.6.16-r13)

        [   ] 2.6.17-r8 (2.6.17-r8)

        [ ~ ] 2.6.17-r9 (2.6.17-r9)

        [ ~ ] 2.6.18 (2.6.18)

        [ ~ ] 2.6.18-r1 (2.6.18-r1)

        [   ] 2.6.18-r2 (2.6.18-r2)

        [   ] 2.6.18-r3 (2.6.18-r3)

        [   ] 2.6.18-r4 (2.6.18-r4)

        [ ~ ] 2.6.18-r5 (2.6.18-r5)

        [ ~ ] 2.6.19 (2.6.19)

        [ ~ ] 2.6.19-r1 (2.6.19-r1)

        [ ~ ] 2.6.19-r2 (2.6.19-r2)

bash-3.2#

```

what dsd meant is you should find that this has been fixed in 2.6.18-r5 . As you can see it's masked so you will need to unmask it if you are not running ~arch testing profile.

 *Quote:*   

> I'm using a separate computer until gnome is done (and I don't have another WM installed), so it involves typing everything out (unless I'm missing something...). 

 

possibly you are,  you can continue to use X , the internet and gnome while it is rebuilding. You dont need to leave the machine alone. You can generally even update Xorg whilst it is running and just restart X once it's done.

If you did not realise that what you did was a sensible course of action , wisely cautious.

That's what I was trying to point out in a humouristic way, I should have been more to the point. Beg your pardon.

 :Cool: 

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## dsd

it was marked stable yesterday, so just emerge --sync and follow:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/kernel-upgrade.xml

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## wynn

NeddySeagoon,

Thanks for the info about avoiding timeouts in empty IDE cables. There's a reference to ide= in kernel-parameters.txt which points to ide.txt.

The parameter you are probably thinking of is "idex=noprobe". This will disable a channel (master and slave) and in my case, there are DVD-ROM/DVD-RW on ide0 and an IDE disk drive (celebrating its promotion to sdc) on ide1 so this parameter couldn't be used.

I thought I had evidence that it was the DVD-ROM but in checking /var/log/messages for earlier kernels I find that with the same kernel, 2.6.15-gentoo-r7 it behaves differently on to consecutive boots: in the first there is virtually no pause

```
Mar 17 08:45:44 bigfoot [   55.059005] VP_IDE: VIA vt8237 (rev 00) IDE UDMA133 controller on pci0000:00:0f.1

Mar 17 08:45:44 bigfoot [   55.059525]     ide0: BM-DMA at 0xd000-0xd007, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA

Mar 17 08:45:44 bigfoot [   55.060045]     ide1: BM-DMA at 0xd008-0xd00f, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:pio

Mar 17 08:45:44 bigfoot [   55.243939] input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard as /class/input/input0

Mar 17 08:45:44 bigfoot [   55.922229] hda: ASUS DVD-ROM DVD-E616P 0104, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive

Mar 17 08:45:44 bigfoot [   56.705021] hdb: PLEXTOR CD-R PX-W1610A, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive

Mar 17 08:45:44 bigfoot [   56.761357] ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14

Mar 17 08:45:44 bigfoot [   57.176294] hdc: Maxtor 6E040L0, ATA DISK drive
```

but in the next one, there is

```
Mar 17 15:00:06 bigfoot [   31.308919] VP_IDE: VIA vt8237 (rev 00) IDE UDMA133 controller on pci0000:00:0f.1

Mar 17 15:00:06 bigfoot [   31.309439]     ide0: BM-DMA at 0xd000-0xd007, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA

Mar 17 15:00:06 bigfoot [   31.309959]     ide1: BM-DMA at 0xd008-0xd00f, BIOS settings: hdc:DMA, hdd:pio

Mar 17 15:00:06 bigfoot [   31.489912] input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard as /class/input/input0

Mar 17 15:00:06 bigfoot [   56.143181] hda: ASUS DVD-ROM DVD-E616P 0104, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive

Mar 17 15:00:06 bigfoot [   56.925972] hdb: PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-110D, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive

Mar 17 15:00:06 bigfoot [   56.982480] ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14

Mar 17 15:00:06 bigfoot [   57.397245] hdc: Maxtor 6E040L0, ATA DISK drive
```

and it isn't always 25 seconds either.

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## NeddySeagoon

wynn,

There is a parameter for a whole IDE interface and another for single drives

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## wynn

 *NeddySeagoon wrote:*   

> wynn,
> 
> There is a parameter for a whole IDE interface and another for single drives

 Finger to head: BANG! BANG! Of course, "hdd=noprobe". Thanks and sorry for not looking harder   :Sad: 

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## Jessehk

A huge thanks to all of you. I'm updating the sources (and about 30 other packages right now), so I'll get back with the results shortly.   :Smile: 

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## Jessehk

Things are not going as well as they could...  :Sad: 

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-3801132.html#3801132

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