This problem has been there for some 30hrs, minimum amount of sleep, not getting from the computer for 20ish hours and etc… But just now I got it solved :)

Problem?

Problem is that when copying a dvd it takes from min 20mins to 45-50mins to copy a dvd to your hdd. Not to mention a completely system slow down, and transfer speed would be only 1.x mbps. This problem had a large extent and even ended up on redhat :)

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=222250

On slackware, you would need to recompile your kernel and add append=”libata.atapi_enabled=1″ line to my lilo.conf. Since grub doesnt have append, I tried adding it as just libata.atapi_enabled=1, which did nothing.

So I wake up after exhausting 20hrs, slept for 3-4hrs, with intention to compile my kernel. But compiling kernel on fedora is different then regular kernel compiling, like lets say on slackware. There’s even a whole new howto do it, and yes, yesterday I made a whole system upgrade, kernel was upgraded too, but it didnt fix anything.

So I make a little pause before I do that, and try one last thing. This time I added
combined_mode=libata to my grub (/boot/grub/menu.lst/), so my Grub would look like this:

[root@localhost absinthe]# cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
# root (hd0,0)
# kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda1
# initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=3
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.18-1.2869.fc6xen)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/xen.gz-2.6.18-1.2869.fc6
module /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-1.2869.fc6xen ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet combined_mode=libata
module /boot/initrd-2.6.18-1.2869.fc6xen.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.18-1.2798.fc6xen)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/xen.gz-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6
module /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6xen ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet combined_mode=libata
module /boot/initrd-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6xen.img

I also added options libata atapi_enabled=1 to my /etc/modprobe.conf/, previosuly I would add my cd/dvd/ as a blacklist …
So my final modprobe would look like:

[root@localhost absinthe]# cat /etc/modprobe.conf
alias eth0 8139too
alias scsi_hostadapter ata_piix
alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
options snd-card-0 index=0
options snd-hda-intel index=0
options libata atapi_enabled=1
remove snd-hda-intel { /usr/sbin/alsactl store 0 >/dev/null 2>&1 || : ; }; /sbin/modprobe -r –ignore-remove snd-hda-intel

I rebboted system, and hey it worked when I literally lost all my hopes, no slow dowsn, not to mention transfer speed is not expected 5/6.x mbps, but 8/9.x mbps … sweet :)

I’m going to fail my programming test today cuz of this, but damn it was worth it.