[gutsy, hardy] live cd boots but installation doesn't (ata_piix problem?)

[Cyrilou]

After installing of the gutsy tribe 5, my laptop (Toshiba Qosmio G20) doesnt boot.

I edited the boot command by adding "break=mount".

I fall in the busybox. After many tries, i managed to boot by typing those commands:

rmmod ata_piix
rmmod ahci
modprobe ahci
exit

Then, i just had to blacklist ata_piix and the boot is ok. However, everytime i insert a CD rom, i have to modprobe ata_piix again (this is not really user friendly)...

Is this bug known ? (i m french and it s not very easy for me to sort the bug reports).

[Baronek (baronek1)]

see my comment at bug 133892
I've blacklisted ata_piix module in initrd, not in real filesystem.
I have no access to machine but it seems that ata_piix is loaded normaly when machine already chrooted.

[Steve Westwood (steve-tmbox)]

I previously raised as bug 133892 against Feisty - full machine spec is shown. I can boot as above but even booting with "break=mount" it takes too long to drop to busybox. I've tried blacklisting ata_piix in /etc/modprobe.d to no effect. Is there a workaround which will allow the laptop to boot normally until the bug is fixed?
Thanks & Regds,
Steve.

[Nanley Chery (nanoman)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Can you try with latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in advance.

[Baronek (baronek1)]

I'm not a reporter but I can confirm that bug persist in gutsy. I have no ability to test it against hardy alpha as this is production machine and i do not want to couse more harm than good.

Anyway the current solution for this problem is (I've tried this once):
blacklist ata_piix
run
update-initramfs -k all -u
(this seems to update initramfs with values from /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist)
then initramfs is ok, so all you do is unblacklist ata_piix in real filesystem as this allow cd to work correctly.

Main reason for the bug is fact that when ata_piix gets loaded before ahci then it will take controll of hdd but this module is somehow broken and is not able to to this correctly.

This is also the reason that sometimes ubuntu starts correctly, some kind of race condition in kernel and the modules gets loaded in proper way (ahci first, then ata_piix) (chance of this event are about 5% for feisty, more in gutsy, 95% in custom compiled kernel what what i can tell - i really do not understand that part of booting)

Also this bug seems like upstream kernel reggression. It was already solved on launchad for edgy or dapper, i dont remember.
Perhaps newest kernel will solve the issue. (kernel 2.6.23 did not - I've tried compiling manualy from master kernel thread on ubuntuforums)

I'm not linux expert so what I've laid out perhaps have some mistakes or anything.

[Alexey Maksimov (alexey-maksimov)]

I can confirm the same problem with hardy.
Livecd works fine, but after clean install hardy doesn't boot.

Workaround provided here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=551435
works.

[Steve Westwood (steve-tmbox)]

Problem recurs on clean install of Dapper. As requested by Jean-Baptiste Lallement, I have booted with the livecd and run the command "sudo lspci -vvnn > lspci-vvnn.log"
The output is attached.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

This bug looks like bug #26013 and bug #148711 . But they're both "Fix Released"

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

The Ubuntu Kernel Team is planning to move to the 2.6.27 kernel for the upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10 release. As a result, the kernel team would appreciate it if you could please test this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. There are one of two ways you should be able to test:

1) If you are comfortable installing packages on your own, the linux-image-2.6.27-* package is currently available for you to install and test.

--or--

2) The upcoming Alpha5 for Intrepid Ibex 8.10 will contain this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. Alpha5 is set to be released Thursday Sept 4. Please watch http://www.ubuntu.com/testing for Alpha5 to be announced. You should then be able to test via a LiveCD.

Please let us know immediately if this newer 2.6.27 kernel resolves the bug reported here or if the issue remains. More importantly, please open a new bug report for each new bug/regression introduced by the 2.6.27 kernel and tag the bug report with 'linux-2.6.27'. Also, please specifically note if the issue does or does not appear in the 2.6.26 kernel. Thanks again, we really appreicate your help and feedback.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Cyrilou, thank you for reporting this and helping make Ubuntu better. Hardy desktop reached EOL on May 12, 2011.
Please see this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We were wondering if this is still an issue on a supported release? If so, can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/ .

If it remains an issue, could you run the following command in a supported release from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux <replace-with-bug-number>

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]