Re: [gentoo-desktop] Re: Desktop problem with /dev/hda

[Brent Busby]

On Sat, 11 Sep 2010, Lindsay Haisley wrote:

> Ugh!!  This sounds like the roadblock I ran into!  The problem
> drive, /dev/hda, holds the root filesystem and several others, and
> didn't show up at all in /dev.  Since the system also has several SATA
> drives, I'm using the sata_promise kernel module for these, but the SATA
> system on the MB is managed by a Promise chipset, which supposedly
> implements hardware RAID but it's proprietary so I'm just using plain
> old discrete non-RAID mode.
>
> I have rather a conflict here, since I already have a /dev/sda.
>
> Is there a HOWTO for using libata-supported kernel components, and
> configuring them in the kernel?  The MB has an ICH5 controller hub,
> which I assume handles the PATA IF.  lspci shows:
>
> IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) IDE Controller (rev 02)
>
> The linux kernel here already has CONFIG_ATA_PIIX, which supposedly
> talks the lingo of the ICH series I/O controller hub.  What else do I
> need here, or where can I go to learn more?

If you go through the list of drivers in the Sata section, toward the 
second half of the list, there are Pata drivers.  They used to be 
deprecated, but now they're the only ones that are supported.  You just 
need to find the Pata drivers (in the Sata section) that correspond to 
what you've got (you'll probably have to look around a bit), and then 
turn off the entire old Pata section.  There should probably be a Pata 
driver in the new Sata section though that handles Intel PIIX chipset; 
it's pretty common.

The danger that will make you want to keep a rescue CD handy is that 
it's hard to predict how your devices are going to get enumerated at 
bootup under these new semantics, or to know whether it will match what 
you've got in your fstab.  If you need a good rescue CD though, I'd 
recommend System Rescue CD (http://www.sysresccd.org/), which is based 
on Gentoo and handles about anything.

-- 
+ Brent A. Busby	 + "We've all heard that a million monkeys
+ UNIX Systems Admin	 +  banging on a million typewriters will
+ University of Chicago	 +  eventually reproduce the entire works of
+ Physical Sciences Div. +  Shakespeare.  Now, thanks to the Internet,
+ James Franck Institute +  we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky