Re: 2.6.28: Is there a way to disable sata probing for certain ports?

[Grant Grundler <grundler@google.com>]

On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 4:24 AM, Justin Piszcz <jpiszcz@lucidpixels.com> wrote:
> When I boot from an Intel X25-E SSD, it takes roughly a few seconds;
> however, items such as:
>
> $ dmesg|grep link\ down
> [    2.447030] ata4: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 300)
> [    4.481288] ata5: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0)
> [    6.501288] ata6: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0)
> [    8.522038] ata7: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0)
> [   10.552288] ata8: SATA link down (SStatus 0 SControl 0)
>
> Scanning for devices on channels that have nothing connected adds to the
> boot time, is there anyway to turn off/disable scanning for certain ports to
> help speed the boot process?

Some BIOSs allow one to enable/disable each port individually.
Have you checked the BIOS config menus for such an option?

drivers/ata/libata-core.c declares "ata_force_param_buf" but I don't
see any documentation for it despite the reference to
Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt .

hth,
grant