Disabled Intel SATA bug policy (Bug #117314)

[Sitsofe Wheeler]

Hi,

The "SATA disk is in PATA mode with kernel 2.6.20-16-generic (piix 
claiming SATA controller on ICH4/ICH5 Intel chipsets)" aka "the great 
renaming"
( 
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.20/+bug/117314 
) has been around for a week and it appears that the patch that led to 
this is going to be reversed. However it is unclear what the current 
advice/policy surrounding this issue is.

Are people that relabeled their partitions with /dev/h??? syntax (rather 
than UUIDs) going to get notice that things are going back the other 
way? Are people whose systems were allegedly fixed going to be 
forewarned that they may be broken again? Is there going to a note 
indicating how a kernel option can be used to disable ata_piix? What 
does it mean when an update is -security? Is the updated kernel 
reversing this patch going to be in -security even though it won't be a 
security fix? Will advanced warning of this update be passed through the 
forums? What is the current advice to people to people who haven't 
updated to 2.6.20-15 yet - wait until 2.6.20-17 is released?

What is the policy on the various spinoff/variant bugs like 
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.20/+bug/116996 
, 
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.20/+bug/117447 
and 
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.20/+bug/117413 
? Should piix problems just be closed once the updated kernel is out and 
the problems are hidden by the use of the SATA driver?

Will the release notes (http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/704 
) be updated to warn about this kernel? Is it possible to have a second 
more technical release notes/errata page in the style of 
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f7/en_US/ (the F7 page talks 
about how partitions must be labeled)?

What systems were affected by this? I fear that there may be some 
additional subset of ICH3, ICH6 and ICH7 owners also affected - is this 
right?

I'm reposting here because I'm out of ideas about where else to raise 
this (I've tried IRC a few times since Martin's comment but I think I've 
been around at the wrong time). If this is the wrong list I apologise - 
please point me in the right direction.

-- 
Sitsofe | http://sucs.org/~sits/