Re: Non-deterministic boot failures; "error attempt to read or write outside of disk 'hd0'"

[Jeremy Lakeman]

After moving my machine, the disk failed to detect. So I wiggled the sata
cables and now the problem has completely disappeared.

Well, I learnt something anyway.

On 2 October 2018 at 12:18, Jeremy Lakeman <address@hidden> wrote:

> I have a slightly old SSD and recently replaced my MB. Clearly my bios is
> trying to talk to the SSD using a more recent sata version.
>
> Linux was encountering errors and resetting the sata port link speed,
> until I added a libata.force=1.5 boot argument.
>
> Then I started noticing boot failures; "error attempt to read or write
> outside of disk 'hd0'".
>
> Most likely to occur while running initrd, but also sometimes during the
> linux command or while loading grub itself. But a couple more reboot
> attempts and the system will start just fine and continue to run without
> any other issues.
>
> As a work around I've patched grub.d/10_linux to wrap both the linux and
> initrd commands in a retry loop like;
>
> until [cmd]; do echo 'retrying'; done
>
> Or course, since the boot process still encounters an error, I have to
> press a key to continue. But that is much less annoying than rebooting
> until I get lucky with every read operation.
>
> At some point I'll try upgrading the MB firmware, but I'm doubtful that
> will change anything.
>
> Does anyone have any other suggestions? Apart from booting from another
> drive?
>