x86: Systems With Certain ATA Hard Disk Drives Hang When Rebooted After Solaris 9 Software Installation (Solaris 9 12/03 Release Notes)

Solaris 9 12/03 Release Notes

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x86: Systems With Certain ATA Hard Disk Drives Hang When Rebooted After Solaris 9 Software Installation

Installing the Solaris 9 software on systems with certain types of ATA hard disk drives results in a system hang. The system hangs when you attempt a soft reboot after the installation has completed.

This problem occurs in systems with ATA hard disk drives that implement the revert to default conditions feature of ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 specification, with respect to the Ultra DMA mode.

Such disk drives revert from Ultra DMA mode to Multiword DMA mode after the software reset, unless the behavior is disabled. The behavior is disabled by using the SET FEATURES / Disable reverting to power-on to defaults command.

The way the problem manifests itself depends upon the BIOS and the type of ATA hard drive that is in the system. This problem might manifest itself in one of the following ways:

If the Ultra DMA mode is enabled in BIOS, and ATA hard disk drives can operate in the Ultra DMA mode, a soft reboot of the system after installation might cause the system to hang in BIOS. No error messages are displayed.

If the Ultra DMA mode is disabled in BIOS, and ATA hard disk drives can operate in Ultra DMA mode, a soft reboot of the system after installation might cause the system to hang. Messages that are similar to the following warnings are displayed:

WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,1/ide@0 (ata0):
         timeout: abort request, target=0 lun=0
WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,1/ide@0 (ata0):
         timeout: abort device, target=0 lun=0
WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,1/ide@0 (ata0):
         timeout: reset target, target=0 lun=0
WARNING: /pci@0,0/pci-ide@1f,1/ide@0 (ata0):
          timeout: reset bus, target=0 lun=0

Workaround: To correct the problem, complete the following steps:

If the system hangs when booted, power cycle the system by turning the power off and then on again. The system should then boot normally.
After the system is booted, log in to the system and become superuser.
Use a text editor to edit the /platform/i86pc/kernel/drv/ata.conf file.

Add the following line:
ata-revert-to-defaults=0;

The next system reboot should proceed without a hang.