On Fri, Aug 01, 2008 at 04:19:26PM +0900, Tejun Heo wrote:

However, SATA or not, there simply isn't a way to abort commands in ATA.
 Issuing random command while other commands are in progress simply is
state machine violation and there will be many interesting results
including complete system lockup (ATA controller dying while holding the
PCI bus).

A system lockup may be an acceptable compromise if that saves the
hardware. Maybe the kernel should explicitely panic unless the
controller/drive is known to be able to recover.

Gabor

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     MTA SZTAKI Computer and Automation Research Institute
                Hungarian Academy of Sciences
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