9.10: Disable DMA check - ide=nodma does not work

[Thorongil]

Hi all,

I have installed 9.10 on a FSC FUTRO 210 (Borat says: Very Naice) with a 4GB Transcend SLC CF Card, however, it seems it does not support DMA, so the kernel hangs at boot with the DMA check.

It starts up in UDMA66, then gets an IRQ timeout, lowers to UDMA33, gets an IRQ timeout, lowers to MWDMA25, gets IRA timeout, enters PIO4 and goes on.

This takes a minute or so during which the kernel hangs.

Filesystem is marked DRDY afterwards, causing a fsck to be done when the boot continues.

So I now try to fiddle around with the various kernel options.

Have found
"ide=nodma" - does not work
"nodma=sda" "nodma=sdb" "nodma=hda" "nodma=hdb" - does not work
"ide_core.nodma=0.0" "ide_core.nodma=0.1" "ide_core.nodma=1.0" "ide_core.nodma=1.1" - does not work

Is there really no way to force the Linux kernel to keep his fingers off any DMA mode?

Thansk for your help!

[The_Cyber_Raven]

Hi,
same problem here.
I search the internet up and down. Finaly i find the solution!
ide=nodma nodma and so on does NOT work.
But try "libata.dma=3" at boot (kernel parameter) this enables DMA for Disk and CD/DVD but NOT for CF

And here is the description:
libata.dma=0 Disable all PATA and SATA DMA
libata.dma=1 PATA and SATA Disk DMA only
libata.dma=2 ATAPI (CDROM) DMA only
libata.dma=4 Compact Flash DMA only
Combinations also work, so libata.dma=3 enables DMA
for disks and CDROMs, but not CFs.
Greez

PS: Sorry for my bad english.

[i8degrees]

I search the internet up and down. Finaly i find the solution!
ide=nodma nodma and so on does NOT work.
But try "libata.dma=3" at boot (kernel parameter) this enables DMA for Disk and CD/DVD but NOT for CF

Thank you so much!! I spent far more time than I ought to have on that quest -- it seems as though that most all of my problems originate from syntax revisions! Damn revisions...

[Interruptor]

Is there any way to disable DMA for only one HDD?
I was given IDE HDD with broken 21st pin and it seriously slows boot process, so I'm searching the way to disable DMA tests only for that drive (I still need it for my main HDD).

(syslog can be found here)

[The_Cyber_Raven]

Hi,
you can try "libata.force="
Look here: Klick me! @ Line 1195
But i never try this.

[OOOOPS]

Where would I place this "libata.dma=0" kunbuntu 10.04.1 i.e. how would I append it to the bootpage?

Thanks for helping the newbie