On Sat, Aug 22, 2009 at 11:41:41AM +0100, Nataraj M Basappa wrote:

 i am new to sparc hardware, just found this isse after setting up
lenny using netboot install.
default kernal options on the stock kernel fails (see attached txt -
withoutdma.txt), if i add ide=nodma boots correctly. is this a known
issue? (as i found on some ubuntu forums)

On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 09:09:15AM +0100, Hugh Pumphrey wrote:

I'm not an expert, but I have had Debian on a SunBlade 100 for a while.  
I have always needed to use the ide=nodma option to get it to boot,  
although the symptoms of allowing it to try DMA have varied from kernel  
to kernel. Usually the boot process just hangs rather than doing the  
kernel panic that you observe.

I googled a bit and it looks like the ALi 15x3 IDE controller/driver has
had various issues with Sun Blades over the years:

http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7294
https://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/bugme-new/2005-April/012164.html
http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2002-25/0049.html

The latest incarnation of the driver even says:

 * pata_ali.c   - ALI 15x3 PATA for new ATA layer
 * based in part upon
 * linux/drivers/ide/pci/alim15x3.c             Version 0.17    2003/01/02

 *  TODO/CHECK
 *      Review Sunblade workaround.

I'm sending this to the IDE list - what is the status of this driver,
and what can the users do to help?

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