Re: [PATCH] Cleanup libata HPA support

[Robert Hancock <hancockr@shaw.ca>]

Ben Collins wrote:
> On Tue, 2007-05-08 at 08:46 -0600, Robert Hancock wrote:
> > Ben Collins wrote:
> > > The original HPA patch that Kyle worked on has gone into current git
> > > without some fixes that we worked through late in the Ubuntu feisty
> > > release. Here's the main copy of the notes I sent to Alan a few weeks
> > > ago in regards to the original patch, and a repatch against current git
> > > to fix things up. Note we have released feisty with the patch attached
> > > (albeit we have HPA enabled by default), and we have not had any reports
> > > directly attributed to it. However, in gutsy (devel for next release,
> > > based on current stock linux-2.6.git), we are already seeing reports of
> > > the same issues we already fixed. 
> > >
> > > The issues we saw were mainly that some controllers didn't return the
> > > correct size from the SET_MAX command (sata_nv is a good example). So I
> > > added a re IDENTIFY after the SET_MAX, and compared all the numbers. If
> > > re-id was correct, but return value from SET_MAX wasn't we print a
> > > warning and use the IDENTIFY value regardless (since that's what the
> > > device is going to use).
> > >
> > > Because we re IDENTIFY, there was also no need to keep n_sectors_boot
> > > around, so that was removed. The ata_hpa_resize() was changed to handle
> > > everything in a single call (checks for HPA support of the device, and
> > > whether ignore_hpa is set or not), and it also sets dev->n_sectors
> > > before returning.
> > >
> > > So far with this patch, we were able to fix all the problems we were
> > > seeing with it (except the sata_nv issue where we had to revert to not
> > > using adma for NO_DATA transactions, already reported to libata-dev).
> > > We've not had any reports of further problems.
> > That sata_nv issue should not be present anymore in the current 
> > libata-dev tree.
>
> That's correct, it is not, at least the machine exception problem isn't.
> However, the incorrect returns from SET_MAX are still an issue with that
> hw. No idea what is causing it.

Curious.. Do you have some output or other details from what was 
actually returned? Also was this on more than one drive model?

--
Robert Hancock      Saskatoon, SK, Canada
To email, remove "nospam" from hancockr@nospamshaw.ca
Home Page: http://www.roberthancock.com/

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