Regarding the excessively long boot times and timeout errors from the ata_piix module... In case enybody reading this didn't catch it in a different thread on this mailing list, Bob Chiodini provided a possible solution or workaround. It disables the SATA drive probing, which is particularly useful on systems that don't support SATA but that the kernel thinks does (of which the Dell Optiplex GX270 is known to exhibit this annoying behavior). Here's what Bob said:
... did some tweaking to /etc/modprobe.conf and this might avoid the ata_piix timeouts during boot and/or udev init. Add or modify as follows: alias scsi_hostadapter ata_piix options ata_piix noprobe As long as you do not have SATA drives. This was tested on a Dell GX270
Of course this only applies once you have FC6 installed (or after upgrading to the latest FC5 kernel). If you're in the process of doing the FC6 install, just be patient--the timeouts will take a couple minutes, but they will pass and it will cause no harm. Thanks Bob. -- Deron Meranda
