Debian – Issues with DMA/PIO detection when using CompactFlash for Boot

I was experiencing difficulties when using a Compact Flash card for booting a Debian install.

The errors I was getting were:

hda:hda: dma_timer_expiry: dma status == 0x21
hda: DMA timeout error
hda: dma timeout error: status=0x58 { DriveReady SeekComplete DataRequest }
ide: failed opcode was: unknown

… and they would repeat 4 or 5 times with about a 15 second timeout/delay between each iteration.  The device identifier would change each time.

With the help of the blog of Stefan Gustafsson, I was able to correct the issue.  He also walked me through my first Kernel recompile in the same post.  The link to his fix is: http://expisoft.blogspot.com/2007/04/ide2cf-timeout-with-linux.html

Thanks Stefan!

Leave a Reply »»