Comment 14 for bug 595448

Just wanted to add a few more details. It appears the problem is that with the Lucid kernel config is that three different drivers are fighting it out for control of my disk controller. The system is configured in the BIOS for AHCI mode. By default in Lucid first ata_piix loads and initializes the controller. Next pata_acpi loads and tries to initialize the controller. Then finally ahci.ko loads and tries to initialize the controller.

ata_piix and pata_acpi are built in to the kernel while ahci.ko is a loadable module.
getting rid of the boot delay is as simple as rebuilding the kernel with AHCI built in to the kernel. Doing this fixes the bug.

however I just wanted to note that the system still appears "funny" to me. For example "disk utility" aka palimpest will show my "SATA Host Adapter" with my hard drives and DVD drive connected to it. But it also shows a secondary ide controller with nothing connected to it that is being driven by ata_piix. This board lacks ide, its pure sata, and with the BIOS configured for AHCI I do not expect to see an ide controller present.

To completely remedy this and make the system appear as expected (at least what I expect) I have to also change ata_piix and pata_ahci to be loadable modules and then blacklist them along with ata_generic in /etc/modprobe.conf.d/blacklist.conf.

Doing that makes the system function as expected. That is to say only ahci is loaded and controlling the SATA controller.

Cheers,
Jarrett

P.S. I just re-verified all of this today using the lucid git tree and building the "Ubuntu-2.6.32-24.38" named tag from git.