2005-10-06 16:55:45

by Ravi Wijayaratne

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Reading SATA command/status register (lib-ata)

Hi all

I am calling libata-core.c:sata_phy_reset(port) from a kernel thread
to reset the hot plugged SATA drive. My machine locks up at the place
where it reads the status from the device in ata_busy_sleep(..).

1494 while ((status & ATA_BUSY) && (time_before(jiffies, timeout))) {
1495 msleep(50);
1496 status = ata_chk_status(ap);
1497 }

ata_chk_status simply does a readl(status_register). It is not clear to me
where the hang is. My machine locks up before I call msleep or ata_chk_status.
(determined by printks) after iterating the above routine a few times. When it
locks up nothing responds. I cant even get to kdb to debug.

But what I noted is that every time it seem to lock up the when the ATA_BUSY status is
removed. (State changes from 0xd0 to 0x50 in ATA Status register). The ATA spec says
that each time this register is read any interrupts are cleared. I wander whether this
would cause the machine to hang ?

Some insight will be much appreciated.

Thanks
Ravi





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