[KLUG Members] disable Hard Drive DMA?

[Adam Tauno Williams]

>Boot up time on my Omnibook 2000CT is substantially slower because the
>system keeps trying to enable hard drive DMA that apparently isn't
>supported.  Does anyone know how to disable the attempt?
>I'm running Mandrake 8.0
> My dmesg is:
>id0: BM-DMA at 0x300-0x3007, BIOS settings: hda:pio, hdb:pio
>hda: IBM-DTCA-24090, ATA DISK drive
>hda: 8007552 sectors (4100 MB) w/468KiB Cache, CHS=993/128/63, (U)DMA
>hda:hda: timeout waiting for DMA
>hda: irq timeout: status=0x58 { DriveReady SeekComplete DateRequest }
>hda: timeout waiting for DMA hda: irq timeout: status=0x58 {
>DriveReady SeekComplete DateRequest }
>hda: timeout waiting for DMA hda: irq timeout: status=0x58 { DriveReady
>SeekComplete DateRequest }
>hda: timeout waiting for DMA hda: irq timeout: status=0x58 { DriveReady
>SeekComplete DateRequest }
>hda: timeout waiting for DMA
>hda: DMA disabled
>The only place I've really been able to find anything that resembles
>what
>I'm looking for was in: /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit
># Turn on harddisk optimization
># There is only one file /etc/sysconfig/harddisks for all disks
># after installing the hdparm-RPM.  If you need different hdparm
>parameters
># for each of your disks, copy /etc/sysconfig/harddisks to
># /etc/sysconfig/harddiskhda (hdb, hdc...)and modify it.
># each disk witch has no special parameters will use the defaults.
...snipped.... 
> USE_DMA=0
>That didn't seem to make a difference.  I tried modifying the

Nope, it won't  /etc/sysconfig/harddisks & /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit turn ON the
options you want.  Some of which may ALREADY be on depending on the default
state of your hardware.  They have not facility to turn OFF options.


What does /sbin/hdparm /dev/hda report?

You can turn off DMA with /sbin/hdparm -d0 /dev/hda

You also may be able to disable DMA in the BIOS as well.

However, on anything but a fossil of a box DMA should work normally.  This error
may indicate something pathological with the machine.

Systems and Network Administrator
Morrison Industries
1825 Monroe Ave NW
Grand Rapids, MI. 49505