Troubleshooting Tip: 'ata6: COMRESET failed (errno=-32)' error in console after factory reset

After performing a factory reset on a FortiGate D series model (e.g.,1000D, 3000D etc), the following error may appear in the console.

Reading boot image 2873717 bytes.
Initializing firewall...ata6: exception Emask 0x50 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x40d0802 action 0xe frozen t4
ata6: irq_stat 0x00000040, connection status changed
ata6: COMRESET failed (errno=-32)
ata6: COMRESET failed (errno=-32)
ata6: COMRESET failed (errno=-32)
ata6: COMRESET failed (errno=-32)
ata6: reset failed, giving up, sstatus = 1
ata6: exception Emask 0x50 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x40d0802 action 0xe frozen t3
ata6: irq_stat 0x00400040, connection status changed
ata6: COMRESET failed (errno=-32)

These messages appear during the boot sequence, but the device continues to boot normally and becomes operational. Root cause analysis confirms this is due to a failing or end-of-life SATA SSD or log disk on aging hardware platforms. During initialization, the kernel attempts to reset the SATA interface (ATA6) but fails due to physical disk degradation.

COMRESET is a SATA PHY reset signal. The 'errno=-32' indicates a low-level I/O or connection failure during link initialization, here typically caused by SSD end-of-life behavior. The COMRESET failure sometimes occurs, indicating that the kernel is trying to recover/initialize the SSD but fails.

If the error appears, it is requested to contact the Fortinet Technical Support team by collecting the following CLI commands to check the hardware report.

CLI:

fnsysctl cat /proc/scsi/scsi
diagnose hardware deviceinfo disk
diagnose sys logdisk smart

Related article:
Troubleshooting Tip: Explaining the error 'previous I/O error to superblock detected'