SATA question

[Jason Tesser]

I have a computer with onboard SATA.  Asus P4C800 board.  I have had problems installing Linux on it.  Does anyone know, will Fedora install
ok with SATA?  It is the only harddisk in the computer

Jason Tesser
Web/Multimedia Programmer
Northland Ministries Inc.
[phone] x3050

[Michael K. Johnson]

On Fri, Oct 10, 2003 at 09:04:00AM -0500, Jason Tesser wrote:
> I have a computer with onboard SATA.  Asus P4C800 board.  I have had problems installing Linux on it.  Does anyone know, will Fedora install
> ok with SATA?  It is the only harddisk in the computer

Fedora Core includes support for some SATA controllers.  I have no
idea what's on that ASUS board, though.

We're working on more SATA support over time...

michaelkjohnson

"He that composes himself is wiser than he that composes a book."
 Linux Application Development                     -- Ben Franklin
 http://people.redhat.com/johnsonm/lad/

[Eric]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Michael K. Johnson"
> Fedora Core includes support for some SATA controllers.  I have no
> idea what's on that ASUS board, though.

It's the Intel 875 chipset I believe. I have a ASUS P4P800 with the Intel
865PE chipset and have had no luck whatsoever with getting SATA to work on
the latest Fedora install. I have found some documentation that says use the
2.4.22 kernel but you have to first install it with settings in
compatibility (basically SATA disabled) then upgrade the kernel to 2.4.22.
Last evening I found something saying that using a 2.4.22 SMP kernel and
SATA doesn't work either. Since I am using a Hyper-Threading CPU I have been
using the SMP kernel to take advantage of the technology. I will give a UP
one a try and see if SATA will work then.
> We're working on more SATA support over time...

Good to hear! I would hate to think I have a 120GB SATA drive that only
works with that other OS at this time :(.

-Eric

[Jeremy Katz]

On Mon, 2003-10-20 at 19:29, Eric Beyer wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> > Fedora Core includes support for some SATA controllers.  I have no
> > idea what's on that ASUS board, though.
>
> It's the Intel 875 chipset I believe. I have a ASUS P4P800 with the Intel
> 865PE chipset and have had no luck whatsoever with getting SATA to work on
> the latest Fedora install.

That should work, AFAIK.  I have a similar box sitting on my desk here
that I do installs on daily.  It's set so that the SATA is in enhanced
mode and the installer then properly loads the libata and ata_piix
modules to drive it.

Cheers,

Jeremy

[Eric]

From: "Jeremy Katz"
> That should work, AFAIK.  I have a similar box sitting on my desk here
> that I do installs on daily.  It's set so that the SATA is in enhanced
> mode and the installer then properly loads the libata and ata_piix
> modules to drive it.

Interesting... I tried the installation several times and it always caused
the box to hang when I had it set to enhanced. I have a 40GB on the primary
IDE, CDRW, DVD on the secondary IDE and the 120GB on the first SATA. When in
enhanced mode I choose the SATA drive to be the first drive rather than the
PATA one. I wish I could find out what exactly is causing it to hang but it
sometimes hangs right after a message saying that it's disabling UDMA on my
CDRW (/dev/hdc) or sometimes it makes it as far as "Checking for new
hardware".

Once I get back home later this week I will mess around with it so more,
perhaps start removing other devices to see if that helps. Thanks for the
feedback, at least it gives me some hope :)

Regards,
Eric

-- sorry for the bad formatting, using a company laptop and OE on the
road --

[Eric]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jeremy Katz" 
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2003 9:03 PM
Subject: Re: SATA question
> That should work, AFAIK.  I have a similar box sitting on my desk here
> that I do installs on daily.  It's set so that the SATA is in enhanced
> mode and the installer then properly loads the libata and ata_piix
> modules to drive it.

Jeremy,

I found that when I disconnect (removed power/parallel cable) to the drive
on the Primary Master (40GB Seagate UDMA 100) that I can successfully
setup/boot into Fedora in enhanced mode.

However upon connecting the PATA drive to the system it hangs each time just
after it says: "hda: attached ide-disk driver". I even placed my old Promise
Ultra 100 card back into the system and connected the PATA drive to it just
to see if it was related to the onboard IDE connecter, needless to say the
same issue occurred and it hung after the attached ide-disk driver message.
Apparently there must be an issue when using both PATA & SATA in enhanced
mode at this time...

Is this an issue I should bug? It's not only related to Fedora as I tried a
Slackware 9.1 setup disk and experience the same issue.

Current configuration:
ASUS P4P800
Intel 2.6GHz CPU (w/hyper-threading)
512 RAM
Pri Master: ST340824A ATA Disk Drive
Pri Slave: None
Sec Master: Plextor W8432 CDRW
Sec Slave: Pioneer DVD-115
4th Master (aka 1st SATA) ST3120026AS
BIOS IDE Configuration: Enhanced Mode : P.A.T.A & S.A.T.A
BIOS Hard Disk First Drive ST3120026AS  Second ST340824A
------------

Thanks,
Eric