[gentoo-server] Re: How to convince "genkernel initrd" to include specific drivers?

[David Wuertele]

Brant> Why not take the config that genkernel created (archived as
Brant> /boot/config.* IIRC) and use that as the basis to build a
Brant> custom kernel that suits your hardware.  Unless you're doing
Brant> something exotic like booting off of an LVM or EVMS volume, you
Brant> can then dispense with the initrd entirely.

The problem is this:

  I have a motherboard with a VIA83CXX IDE controller.
  I have three PCI cards with SIIMAGE IDE controllers.

  I have a RAID5 spanning seven drives, which are on both types of
  controllers.

  When I boot a kernel that has the SIIMAGE driver compiled in, the
  drive order gets mapped wrong.  Using CONFIG_BLK_DEV_OFFBOARD
  doesn't help, I tried it.  It just forces the kernel to get the
  order wrong.

  When I boot a kernel that has the SIIMAGE driver installed as a
  module, the drive order is fine, but the kernel doesn't load the
  siimage module at boot time, and it craps out.

  I have successfuly made initrd images with the siimage driver in it,
  but I can't get the kernel to use that driver.  Even if I make my
  kernel boot command line look like this:

    kernel /kernel-2.6.8-gentoo-r3.8 root=/dev/ram0 real_root=/dev/hda2 init=/linuxrc ide2=siimage ide3=siimage ide4=siimage ide5=siimage ide6=siimage ide7=siimage

So I want to either:

  a) compile in both drivers, and figure out how to force the kernel
     to use the VIA83CXX driver for ide0

or

  b) compile in the VIA driver only, and figure out how to force the
     kernel to load the siimage driver for ide2,3,4,5,6,7.

Dave