Don't know if this is allowed, but I'm posting my kernel bug here too. You can also find this bug upstream: http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13365 The contents of my bug report on bugzilla.kernel.org: This used to work in 2.6.27. It seems 2.6.28 or greater (tested with 2.6.28-gentoo-r5 and the latest stable on kernel.org, 2.6.29.4) cannot use the Intel 82801DB (ICH4) IDE Controller properly. The kernel will boot fine, and the init script will be launched, but as soon as fsck does a check on whether the partition is /really/ fine before the init services mount it, everything stops. fsck complains that there's a different superblock count (few thousand difference) than what the partition table claims. If I bot back into 2.6.27 after booting into either of these kernels, fsck will complain in a different way that there are errors in the file-system, but it cleans it up and boot continues. If I reboot again into 2.6.27, then fsck doesn't complain at all. However, as soon as I attempt .28 or .29, things go awry again. [snip] Besides the Gentoo kernel and the vanilla kernel, I also have a unionfs patch. However, I have left it out of the mix for 2.6.28 and .29 to make sure that wasn't the cause. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: $ emerge --info Portage 2.1.6.11 (default/linux/x86/2008.0/desktop, gcc-4.3.2, glibc-2.8_p20080602-r1, 2.6.27-gentoo-r10_custom1 i686) ================================================================= System uname: Linux-2.6.27-gentoo-r10_custom1-i686-Intel-R-_Pentium-R-_4_CPU_1.80GHz-with-glibc2.0 Timestamp of tree: Fri, 22 May 2009 11:45:02 +0000 ccache version 2.4 [enabled] app-shells/bash: 3.2_p39 dev-java/java-config: 2.1.7 dev-lang/python: 2.5.4-r2 dev-util/ccache: 2.4-r7 dev-util/cmake: 2.4.8 sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.11.1 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.6-r2 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.63 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.7.9-r1, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10.2 sys-devel/binutils: 2.18-r3 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.26 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.27-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" CBUILD="i486-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O2 -mtune=pentium4 -pipe" CHOST="i486-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/3.5/env /usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/php/apache2-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cgi-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cli-php5/ext-active/ /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo /etc/udev/rules.d" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -mtune=pentium4 -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="ccache collision-protect distlocks fixpackages parallel-fetch protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-orphans userfetch" GENTOO_MIRRORS=" http://gentoo.osuosl.org/ http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/gentoo/ http://www.gtlib.gatech.edu/pub/gentoo http://gentoo.mirrors.easynews.com/linux/gentoo/ " LANG="en_US.UTF-8" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1" LINGUAS="en" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/portage/local/layman/sunrise /usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.namerica.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X a52 aac acl acpi alsa avahi bash-completion berkdb bluetooth branding bzip2 cairo cdr cjk cli cracklib crypt cups dbus divx dri dvd dvdr dvdread eds emboss encode esd evo fam firefox flac fortran gdbm gif gnome gpm gstreamer gtk hal iconv ipv6 isdnlog jpeg kde ldap libnotify mad midi mikmod mmx mp3 mpeg mudflap nautilus ncurses nls nptl nptlonly nsplugin ogg opengl openmp pam pcre pdf perl png ppds pppd pulseaudio python qt3 qt3support qt4 quicktime readline reflection samba sdl session spell spl sse sse2 ssl startup-notification svg sysfs tcpd theora tiff truetype unicode usb vorbis win32codecs x86 xml xorg xulrunner xv xvid zlib" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1 emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias auth_digest" CAMERAS="canon ptp2" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse evdev" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LINGUAS="en" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="intel" Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, MAKEOPTS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS I'll attach lspci -vvvnn information in the next comment.
Created attachment 192152 [details] lspci -vvvnn
Workaround discovered: use old ATA drivers instead of Serial ATA drivers. This allows 2.6.29.4 to boot, and I'm pretty sure 2.6.28 will boot with this change as well.
The suggestion to use "libata.ignore_hpa=1" fixed it for me. Upstream is working on various patches for 2.6.31 to address the problem. The bug should be closed in Gentoo's bug tracker unless Jacob is still having problems.
Appears to be fixed with a kernel parameter with future patches planned.
