[indiana-discuss] "zio_read_data failed" in GRUB while trying to boot from compact flash (CF)

[James Lee]

James Lee wrote:
> I am trying to get OpenSolaris 2009.06 to run from my 32 GB Kingston
> compact flash drive attached to a standard Sil 0680 IDE controller.  The
> installer detects the card and install successfully.  Upon reboot, GRUB
> drops to a "grub>" prompt.  Any attempts to read menu.lst fail with:
> 
> grub> root (hd0,0,a)
> Filesystem type is zfs ...
> grub> find /rpool/boot/grub/menu.lst
> zio_read_data failed
> Error 15: File not found
> Any idea why this would fail in GRUB but work when booted from a livecd?
>  Thanks.


I downgraded the firmware of the controller and everything boots and
works now on a clean 2009.06 installation.  Unfortunately, read speeds
are only at 2MB/s max.  That's compared to 40-50MB/s on the same
controller and card in Linux.

I guess that's another issue which I'll look into some more.  So far
I've just tried playing with enabling and disabling DMA using the
"ata-disk-dma-enabled" kernel option.

Thanks for all the help everybody!