hi. i've been pulling my hair out trying to get my new sata drive
working on my slackware 10.0 box. i am not trying to install to this
drive or anything, like the previous hundreds of other posts. i have
already compiled 2.6.8.1 with sata support for my chipset (sata_via),
and the kernel appears to see it fine. here's the relevant snip from
/var/log/messages:

Aug 31 19:24:09 limbo kernel: sata_via(0000:00:0f.0): routed to hard
irq line 10
Aug 31 19:24:09 limbo kernel: ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xB000 ctl
0xA802 bmdma 0x9800 irq 3
Aug 31 19:24:09 limbo kernel: ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xA400 ctl
0xA002 bmdma 0x9808 irq 3
Aug 31 19:24:09 limbo kernel: ata1: dev 0 ATA, max UDMA/133, 390721968
sectors: lba48
Aug 31 19:24:09 limbo kernel: ata1: dev 0 configured for UDMA/133
Aug 31 19:24:09 limbo kernel: scsi0 : sata_via
Aug 31 19:24:09 limbo kernel: ata2: no device found (phy stat
00000000)
Aug 31 19:24:09 limbo kernel: scsi1 : sata_via
Aug 31 19:24:09 limbo kernel: Vendor: ATA Model: ST3200822AS
Rev: 3.01
Aug 31 19:24:09 limbo kernel: Type: Direct-Access
ANSI SCSI revision: 05
Aug 31 19:24:09 limbo kernel: SCSI device sda: 390721968 512-byte hdwr
sectors (200050 MB)
Aug 31 19:24:09 limbo kernel: SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
Aug 31 19:24:09 limbo kernel: sda:<3>ata1: command 0x25 timeout, stat
0x50 host_stat 0x4
Aug 31 19:24:09 limbo kernel: Attached scsi disk sda at scsi0, channel
0, id 0, lun 0


the problem that i'm having is that i'm not able to access /dev/sda at
all. i want to partition and format it, but whenever i try to run
'cfdisk /dev/sda', then my mouse dies, my network card goes down, and
cfdisk stays in an uninterruptible sleep, according to 'ps' (state
"D+").

the mouse and network card are because of an interrupt problem. as you
can see above, sata_via is locking onto IRQ 10. my mouse is usb, and
rc.hotplug is setting up interrupt 10 as so ('cat /proc/interrupts'):

10: 25679 XT-PIC eth0, uhci_hcd, uhci_hcd

so when i try to access /dev/sda with cfdisk, i get the following
errors in my syslog:

Aug 31 18:48:43 limbo kernel: irq 10: nobody cared!
Aug 31 18:48:43 limbo kernel: [<c0107a5a>] __report_bad_irq+0x2a/0x90
Aug 31 18:48:43 limbo kernel: [<c0107b50>] note_interrupt+0x70/0xa0
Aug 31 18:48:43 limbo kernel: [<c0107df1>] do_IRQ+0x121/0x130
Aug 31 18:48:43 limbo kernel: [<c0106274>] common_interrupt+0x18/0x20
Aug 31 18:48:43 limbo kernel: [<c011f8f0>] __do_softirq+0x30/0x80
Aug 31 18:48:43 limbo kernel: [<c011f966>] do_softirq+0x26/0x30
Aug 31 18:48:43 limbo kernel: [<c0107dcd>] do_IRQ+0xfd/0x130
Aug 31 18:48:43 limbo kernel: [<c0106274>] common_interrupt+0x18/0x20
Aug 31 18:48:43 limbo kernel: [<c0104053>] default_idle+0x23/0x30
Aug 31 18:48:43 limbo kernel: [<c01040bc>] cpu_idle+0x2c/0x40
Aug 31 18:48:43 limbo kernel: [<c03b8711>] start_kernel+0x191/0x1d0
Aug 31 18:48:43 limbo kernel: [<c03b8310>]
unknown_bootoption+0x0/0x160
Aug 31 18:48:43 limbo kernel: handlers:
Aug 31 18:48:43 limbo kernel: [<e0c09670>] (rhine_interrupt+0x0/0x1b0
[via_rhine])
Aug 31 18:48:43 limbo kernel: [<c0253440>] (usb_hcd_irq+0x0/0x70)
Aug 31 18:48:43 limbo kernel: [<c0253440>] (usb_hcd_irq+0x0/0x70)
Aug 31 18:48:43 limbo kernel: Disabling IRQ #10


i've tried disabling hotplug, which left IRQ 10 empty, but i still had
the same problem trying to access /dev/sda, although i didn't get the
error in my syslog. cfdisk just hangs in I/O sleep...

i have full messages/syslogs/proc info if anyone needs more info, i
didn't include more because i thought this was long enough. thanks in
advance.