Booting up renders error: “ata1.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)” in Ubuntu

Question

Sometimes, non-deterministically, when I boot I get this error:

[   xx.xxxxxx] ata1.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
[   xx.xxxxxx] ata2.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)

Where the x characters are some numbers.

There's a thread here:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/206635

But of course it's just a bunch of "me too!" posts, since it's not StackOverflow.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

Answer 1

Edit your /boot/grub/menu.lst file as root and go to the following section:

## ## Start Default Options ##
## default kernel options
## default kernel options for automagic boot options
## If you want special options for specific kernels use kopt_x_y_z
## where x.y.z is kernel version. Minor versions can be omitted.
## e.g. kopt=root=/dev/hda1 ro
##      kopt_2_6_8=root=/dev/hdc1 ro
##      kopt_2_6_8_2_686=root=/dev/hdc2 ro
# (some_options_already_here)

Beside the part that only has the single hash mark '#', add these options to the end of the line:

irqpoll all_generic_ide

So the section looks like this:

## ## Start Default Options ##
## default kernel options
## default kernel options for automagic boot options
## If you want special options for specific kernels use kopt_x_y_z
## where x.y.z is kernel version. Minor versions can be omitted.
## e.g. kopt=root=/dev/hda1 ro
##      kopt_2_6_8=root=/dev/hdc1 ro
##      kopt_2_6_8_2_686=root=/dev/hdc2 ro
# (some_options_already_here) irqpoll all_generic_ide

Do not edit the kernel lines that are in the rest of the file, because when Ubuntu automagically updates the kernel list, it will pull the options from the previously mentioned section, and overwrite all kernel lines.