This is a particularly nasty SCSI ATA Translation Layer (SATL) problem.

SAT-2 says (section 8.12.2)

        if the device is in the stopped state as the result of
        processing a START STOP UNIT command (see 9.11), then the SATL
        shall terminate the TEST UNIT READY command with CHECK CONDITION
        status with the sense key set to NOT READY and the additional
        sense code of LOGICAL UNIT NOT READY, INITIALIZING COMMAND
        REQUIRED;

mpt2sas internal SATL seems to implement this.  The result is very confusing
standby behaviour (using hdparm -y).  If you suspend a drive and then send
another command, usually it wakes up.  However, if the next command is a TEST
UNIT READY, the SATL sees that the drive is suspended and proceeds to follow
the SATL rules for this, returning NOT READY to all subsequent commands.  This
means that the ordering of TEST UNIT READY is crucial: if you send TUR and
then a command, you get a NOT READY to both back.  If you send a command and
then a TUR, you get GOOD status because the preceeding command woke the drive.

This bit us badly because

commit 85ef06d1
Author: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Date:   Fri Jul 1 16:17:47 2011 +0200

    block: flush MEDIA_CHANGE from drivers on close(2)

Changed our ordering on TEST UNIT READY commands meaning that SATA drives
connected to an mpt2sas now suspend and refuse to wake (because the mpt2sas
SATL sees the suspend *before* the drives get awoken by the next ATA command)
resulting in lots of failed commands.

The standard is completely nuts forcing this inconsistent behaviour, but we
have to work around it.

The fix for this is twofold:

   1. Set the allow_restart flag so we wake the drive when we see it has been
      suspended

   2. Return all TEST UNIT READY status directly to the mid layer without any
      further error handling which prevents us causing error handling which
      may offline the device just because of a media check TUR.
Reported-by: Matthias Prager <linux@matthiasprager.de>
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: James Bottomley <JBottomley@Parallels.com>