Comment 149 for bug 285392

I too experiencing this bug on Ubuntu 10.10

Kernel 2.3.35-22
Motherboard: ASUS M4A87TD/USB3: DUAL DDR3,SATA 6.0GB/s, USB 3.0
Processor: AMD PHENOM II X6 1055T (2.80GHz/9MB CACHE/AM3/)
Disk: 640GB WD CAVIAR BLACK WD6402AAEX, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (7200rpm)

I have successfully installed Maverick from a USB stick. Thereafter, normal boot aborts in initramfs with "ALERT! /dev/disk/by-uuid/xxxxxx does not exist. Dropping to a shell", as reported by sdedgar,
where xxxxxx is the uuid of my root filesystem.

Booting in recovery mode, I get messages:

ata4: softreset failed (device not ready)
ata4: softreset failed (device not ready)
ata4: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=0)
ata4: softreset failed (device not ready)
ata4: limiting SATA link speed to 1.5 Gbp
ata4: softreset failed (device not ready)
ata4: reset failed, giving up

At this point, at the shell, if I do:

ls /dev/disk/by-uuid

I will get a no-such-file-or-directory. But if I then repeat the command
5 - 10 times, the directory will appear, and xxxxxx will be listed.