Some kernels boot slow in my old PC. (solved)

[rodin.s]

I am using Puppy on old computer with CPU AMD-K6-3D and 256M of RAM.
Puppy-4.3.0 with kernel 2.6.21 boots fast enough but one with kernel 2.6.30 is slow. Last one that boots fast is Wary-0.3 with kernel 2.6.27. I am using it now on that computer. All other puppies boot slow. I have to wait about 5 min. The delay is here (ide drive detection) (/tmp/bootkernel):

Code: Select all

 ata2.00: ATA-4: WDC WD64AA, 82.10A82, max UDMA/66
ata2.00: 12594960 sectors, multi 16: LBA 
ata2.01: ATAPI: SAMSUNG CD-ROM  SC-152L, C100, max MWDMA2
ata2.00: configured for UDMA/33
ata2.01: configured for MWDMA2
psmouse serio1: ID: 10 00 64
input: ImExPS/2 Generic Explorer Mouse as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/
input1
ata1.01: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
ata1.01: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x5)
ata1.01: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
ata1.01: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x5)
ata1.01: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
ata1.01: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x5)
ata1.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
ata1.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x5)
ata1.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
ata1.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x5)
ata1.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
ata1.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x5)

with fast booting kernel 2.6.27 it looks like that:

Code: Select all

Probing IDE interface ide1...
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
ide 01:01.03: activated
ide-pnp: generic PnP IDE interface
Probing IDE interface ide2...
ide2 at 0x168-0x16f,0x36e on irq 9
hda: max request size: 128KiB
hda: 12594960 sectors (6448 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=13328/15/63
hda: cache flushes not supported
 hda: hda1 hda2
hdb: ATAPI 52X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20

On one ide I have HDD and CD-ROM, and nothing on another.
How to make this 'slow' kernels to boot faster so I could use recent Wary without waiting long for it to boot?

[Béèm]

Maybe put the HDD on IDE1 and the CD on IDE2.

[rodin.s]

That other IDE doesn't work. Something wrong with it.

[looseSCREWorTWO]

With only 256mb RAM, I would create a Swap Partition (or Swap File) of 256mb. Reboot and Puppy will automatically use the Swap as extra "virtual RAM".

For details of making a Swap Partition, see here:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 01&start=4

[rodin.s]

I have 256M of swap.

[Béèm]

That other IDE doesn't work. Something wrong with it.

You should hae mentioned this in your earlier post.
I find it frustrating trying to find solutions, while the original poster already knows that it wouldn't work. I can spend my time better.

[rodin.s]

Sorry. I guess I'll try to experiment with IDE2. I have tested it long time ago with windows then put all drives on IDE1. Should it react that way on empty IDE?

[Béèm]

Well, if you put the CD on IDE2 and it isn't seen on the desktop, the ID2 probably don't work indeed.

[rodin.s]

I put CDROM on IDE2 and it didn't help.

Code: Select all

ata2.00: ATA-4: WDC WD64AA, 82.10A82, max UDMA/66
ata2.00: 12594960 sectors, multi 16: LBA 
ata2.00: configured for UDMA/33
psmouse serio1: ID: 10 00 64
input: ImExPS/2 Generic Explorer Mouse as /devices/platform/i8042/serio1/input/input1
ata1.01: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
ata1.01: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x5)
ata1.01: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
ata1.01: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x5)
ata1.01: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
ata1.01: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x5)
ata1.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
ata1.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x5)
ata1.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
ata1.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x5)
ata1.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
ata1.00: failed to IDENTIFY (I/O error, err_mask=0x5)
scsi 1:0:0:0: Direct-Access     ATA      WDC WD64AA       82.1 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] 12594960 512-byte logical blocks: (6.44 GB/6.00 GiB)
sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
 sda: sda1 sda2
sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk
ata3.00: ATAPI: SAMSUNG CD-ROM  SC-152L, C100, max MWDMA2
ata3.00: configured for MWDMA2
scsi 2:0:0:0: CD-ROM            SAMSUNG  CD-ROM SC-152L   C100 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 1x/52x cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
sr 2:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0

As I understand ata2 is my IDE1 and ata3 is my IDE2. But what is ata1 then which "failed to IDENTIFY"?

[wdm]

Hi rodin.s

My puppy computer is also a AMD K6-3D 400 w/256mb. I can't use any puppy (or other distro for that matter) with kernel 2.6.30 or later. Some won't detect the hhd and can't be installed and some won't even boot. Most earlier kernels will work ok. I'm useing ttuuxxx's classic pup 214top5 now. It runs great on this cpu and is more uptodate than other retro versions. It is getting hard to find any distros that will run on these old computers.

[rodin.s]

Tried that pup 214top5. Well, works OK, but I guess I like Wary-0.3 more. The answer to my question is using older kernels with IDE support where disks named hda, not sda. Tried tinycore with kernel 2.6.33 - starts fast and HDD is hda1.

[scsijon]

@rodin.s

looking at your inserts AND considering the following:

your IDE blocks are IDE1 and IDE2, or ide0 and ide1, depending on how it has been written.

1>it looks to me as if your ide port (ata01) is either badly faulty or more likely has been turned off/coded wrongly in your bios settings. Can you check carefully ALL your bios settings and their meanings and effects as some can also affect others, Also consider what you have plugged in to which card sockets and what interupts etc. are being used by what or shared, ide's should not be shared. It may be even worth writing them all down and resetting the motherboard, most manuals are available online if you don't have one.
2>Also check plug polarities if the two sockets are next to each other, I have seen them in opposite directions and check if there are bent or broken/missing pins and your using the correct types of cables (there are actually two ide cable types although they look very similar)
3>Also worth checking online is if you should have had a bios firmware upgrade, most of the older ones produced a downloadable iso that creates a floppy disc that does the actual work.
4> I also don't see an ata00 anywhere (master for ide0), it may need to be on to have the slave up.

other: the hda or sda should not matter to you, using a sda (scsi) format driver interface is better for modern drives primarily because of their size, it allows more partitions can be added per drive (theoretically 64), direct transfer between devices (no cpu used), offload of index control to the device, and the driver links for raid, etc. interfaces are usually built into the driver by standard.

can you add the motherboards ID/version etc so I can look further.

regards
scsijon

[Karl Godt]

/mnt/sda9/Kernels/2.6.30/DOTconfig-K2.6.30.5-01SEPT09-TICKLESS-SMP - Linux Kernel v2.6.30 Configuration

Device Drivers --->

< > ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support --->

ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support
CONFIG_IDE:

If you say Y here, your kernel will be able to manage low cost mass
storage units such as ATA/(E)IDE and ATAPI units. The most common
cases are IDE hard drives and ATAPI CD-ROM drives.

If your system is pure SCSI and doesn't use these interfaces, you
can say N here.

Integrated Disk Electronics (IDE aka ATA-1) is a connecting standard
for mass storage units such as hard disks. It was designed by
Western Digital and Compaq Computer in 1984. It was then named
ST506. Quite a number of disks use the IDE interface.

AT Attachment (ATA) is the superset of the IDE specifications.
ST506 was also called ATA-1.

Fast-IDE is ATA-2 (also named Fast ATA), Enhanced IDE (EIDE) is
ATA-3. It provides support for larger disks (up to 8.4GB by means of
the LBA standard), more disks (4 instead of 2) and for other mass
storage units such as tapes and cdrom. UDMA/33 (aka UltraDMA/33) is
ATA-4 and provides faster (and more CPU friendly) transfer modes
than previous PIO (Programmed processor Input/Output) from previous
ATA/IDE standards by means of fast DMA controllers.

ATA Packet Interface (ATAPI) is a protocol used by EIDE tape and
CD-ROM drives, similar in many respects to the SCSI protocol.

SMART IDE (Self Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) was
designed in order to prevent data corruption and disk crash by
detecting pre hardware failure conditions (heat, access time, and
the like...). Disks built since June 1995 may follow this standard.
The kernel itself doesn't manage this; however there are quite a
number of user programs such as smart that can query the status of
SMART parameters from disk drives.

To compile this driver as a module, choose M here: the
module will be called ide-core.ko.

For further information, please read <file:Documentation/ide/ide.txt>.

If unsure, say Y.

Symbol: IDE [=n]
Prompt: ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support
Defined at drivers/ide/Kconfig:9
Depends on: HAVE_IDE && BLOCK
Location:
-> Device Drivers

.config - Linux Kernel v2.6.33.7 Configuration

< > ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support (DEPRECATED) --->

CONFIG_IDE:

If you say Y here, your kernel will be able to manage ATA/(E)IDE and
ATAPI units. The most common cases are IDE hard drives and ATAPI
CD-ROM drives.

This subsystem is currently in maintenance mode with only bug fix
changes applied. Users of ATA hardware are encouraged to migrate to
the newer ATA subsystem ("Serial ATA (prod) and Parallel ATA
(experimental) drivers") which is more actively maintained.

To compile this driver as a module, choose M here: the
module will be called ide-core.

For further information, please read <file:Documentation/ide/ide.txt>.

If unsure, say N.

Symbol: IDE [=n]
Prompt: ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support (DEPRECATED)
Defined at drivers/ide/Kconfig:9
Depends on: HAVE_IDE [=y] && BLOCK [=y]
Location:
-> Device Drivers

[Karl Godt]

Today I finally decided to compile the 2.6.30 kernel with the old ATA support mostly integrated additionally to the integated SCSI ,PATA and SATA support and it works fine . Both PATA/SATA and ATA hang a little while mounting the ROOTFS :

[ 0.212410] SCSI subsystem initialized
[ 0.212836] libata version 3.00 loaded.

[ 0.779041] Block layer SCSI generic (bsg) driver version 0.4 loaded (major 254)

[ 2.820463] Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver
[ 2.821134] sis5513 0000:00:02.5: SiS735 ATA 100 (2nd gen) controller
[ 2.821225] sis5513 0000:00:02.5: IDE controller (0x1039:0x5513 rev 0xd0)
[ 2.821453] sis5513 0000:00:02.5: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
[ 2.821551] ide0: BM-DMA at 0xff00-0xff07
[ 2.821656] ide1: BM-DMA at 0xff08-0xff0f
[ 2.821754] Probing IDE interface ide0...
[ 3.523525] hda: LTN486S, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
[ 3.843534] hda: host max PIO4 wanted PIO255(auto-tune) selected PIO4
[ 3.843692] hda: MWDMA2 mode selected
[ 3.843869] Probing IDE interface ide1...
[ 4.116812] hdc: ST320410A, ATA DISK drive
[ 4.436691] hdd: ST360020A, ATA DISK drive
[ 4.436904] hdc: host max PIO4 wanted PIO255(auto-tune) selected PIO4
[ 4.439809] hdc: UDMA/100 mode selected
[ 4.442740] hdd: host max PIO4 wanted PIO255(auto-tune) selected PIO4
[ 4.445722] hdd: UDMA/100 mode selected

[ 4.692460] md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
[ 4.692543] md: Scanned 0 and added 0 devices.
[ 4.692624] md: autorun ...
[ 4.692700] md: ... autorun DONE.
[ 4.694926] EXT3-fs: INFO: recovery required on readonly filesystem.
[ 4.695018] EXT3-fs: write access will be enabled during recovery.

[ 30.539125] kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
[ 30.539282] EXT3-fs: recovery complete.
[ 30.544952] EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
[ 30.545167] VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly on device 22:65.
[ 30.545453] Freeing unused kernel memory: 364k freed
[ 31.157884] EXT3 FS on hdd1, internal journal

and this is a log without the older ATA support :

[ 2.381035] hd: no drives specified - use hd=cyl,head,sectors on kernel command line
[ 2.381203] BIOS EDD facility v0.16 2004-Jun-25, 2 devices found
[ 2.399567] input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard as /devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input3
[ 2.533947] ata1.00: ATAPI: LTN486S, YQSJ, max MWDMA2
[ 2.540306] ata1.00: configured for PIO4
[ 2.541788] scsi 0:0:0:0: CD-ROM COMPAQ CD-ROM LTN486S YQSJ PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[ 2.545401] sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 48x/48x cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
[ 2.545493] Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
[ 2.546026] sr 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0
[ 2.546620] sr 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 5
[ 2.713946] ata2.00: ATA-6: ST320410A, 3.34, max UDMA/100
[ 2.714033] ata2.00: 39102336 sectors, multi 16: LBA
[ 2.714385] ata2.01: ATA-6: ST360020A, 3.34, max UDMA/100
[ 2.714466] ata2.01: 117231408 sectors, multi 16: LBA
[ 2.727111] ata2.00: configured for UDMA/100
[ 2.740428] ata2.01: configured for UDMA/100
[ 2.740867] scsi 1:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA ST320410A 3.34 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[ 2.741938] sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0
[ 2.742561] sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] 39102336 512-byte hardware sectors: (20.0 GB/18.6 GiB)
[ 2.742752] sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
[ 2.742833] sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[ 2.743030] sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[ 2.743720] sda: sda1 sda2
[ 2.779412] scsi 1:0:1:0: Direct-Access ATA ST360020A 3.34 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[ 2.780538] sd 1:0:1:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 0
[ 2.808825] sd 1:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI disk
[ 2.809034] sd 1:0:1:0: [sdb] 117231408 512-byte hardware sectors: (60.0 GB/55.8 GiB)
[ 2.809219] sd 1:0:1:0: [sdb] Write Protect is off
[ 2.809303] sd 1:0:1:0: [sdb] Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
[ 2.809491] sd 1:0:1:0: [sdb] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[ 2.810213] sdb: sdb1 sdb2 < sdb5 sdb6 sdb7 sdb8 >
[ 2.912505] sd 1:0:1:0: [sdb] Attached SCSI disk
[ 2.914887] EXT3-fs: INFO: recovery required on readonly filesystem.
[ 2.914972] EXT3-fs: write access will be enabled during recovery.
[ 13.347886] kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
[ 13.348042] EXT3-fs: recovery complete.
[ 13.349506] EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with writeback data mode.
[ 13.349722] VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly on device 8:17.
[ 13.350004] Freeing unused kernel memory: 352k freed
[ 13.914086] EXT3 FS on sdb1, internal journal

On the 1045 Mhz AMD single core ATHLON board with EIDE - UDMA 100 the newer harddrive drivers are much faster : 17 seconds .
But I like the drive numbering better then the newer drivers : Took me two kernal panics : first bootin with root=/dev/sdb1 , second with root=/dev/hdb1 and finally booted fine with root=/dev/hdd1

[Karl Godt]

Just want to add that the second boot is much faster

[ 4.720330] register_blkdev: cannot get major 3 for hd
[ 4.720423] BIOS EDD facility v0.16 2004-Jun-25, 2 devices found
[ 4.721134] md: Waiting for all devices to be available before autodetect
[ 4.721222] md: If you don't use raid, use raid=noautodetect
[ 4.721972] md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
[ 4.722056] md: Scanned 0 and added 0 devices.
[ 4.722134] md: autorun ...
[ 4.722210] md: ... autorun DONE.
[ 4.724391] EXT3-fs: INFO: recovery required on readonly filesystem.
[ 4.724481] EXT3-fs: write access will be enabled during recovery.
[ 4.740530] input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard as /devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input3
[ 16.822321] kjournald starting. Commit interval 5 seconds
[ 16.822461] EXT3-fs: recovery complete.
[ 16.830284] EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
[ 16.830495] VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly on device 22:65.
[ 16.830774] Freeing unused kernel memory: 364k freed
[ 17.467608] EXT3 FS on hdd1, internal journal

[rodin.s]

I stopped watching this topic for replies. But I am still interested in solving the problem. Now it would be nice to run Wary-5.0 on that PC. Is it possible to compile the kernel and replace the original one in Wary changing just IDE? Maybe you can give me simple steps or Puppy kernel compiling info.
I put some screenshots with hardinfo of my PC here:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... h&id=36958
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... h&id=36956
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... h&id=36955

It looks like:
ata1 - phantom
ata2 - primary IDE
ata3 - secondary IDE;
and delay is while looking for ata1.
On another PC
ata1 - primary IDE
ata2 - secondary IDE.

[rodin.s]

I have soundcard es1868 on ISA port. When I removed it - boot was normal.

Code: Select all

ata1.00: ATA-4: WDC WD64AA, 82.10A82, max UDMA/66
ata1.00: 12594960 sectors, multi 16: LBA 
ata1.01: ATAPI: SAMSUNG CD-ROM  SC-152L, C100, max MWDMA2
ata1.00: configured for UDMA/33
ata1.01: configured for MWDMA2

So phantom ata1 was soundcard. The simple solution is to replace soundcard, but why kernel thought that soundcard was hard drive? Maybe it is possible to do something with BIOS settings.

[rodin.s]

Wary-5.1.1-uniproc-ide runs great on that PC. I only had to replace ffmpeg.

[vector01]

Yes, I know this thread is listed as solved but others might, like me, be reading this thread and not feel it solved. I have been getting

ata3.00: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
ata3.00: failed to identify (i/o error, err_mask=0x05)
...
...
ata3.01: qc timeout (cmd 0xec)
ata3.01 failed to identify (i/o error, err_mask=0x05)
...
...

and I could not understand where this third IDE chain was coming from. The machine I am using with Puppy has an Eagle 1869 ISA bus sound card which (as I have just realised) has an IDE connector on it. I dont have anything connected to that IDE connector. So, yes, the ATA driver is correct in looking at it but, for some reason, the driver fails to realise that there is nothing connected to that chain. It seems that the driver keeps trying to get data about the connected devices (struct ata_port ??) until it gives up trying and lets the rest of the boot up process continue.

I have the same problem running Slackware 13.37 on the same machine.

I have not gone anything like deeply enough into the ata code to find out why this is happening.