Switching to libata drivers

[John Wendel]

I'd like to switch my PATA drives to use the new libata drivers 
instead of the old ide drivers. Can someone point me to a howto or 
other document that explains what I need to change.

Thanks,

John

[Kam Leo]

On 4/27/07, John Wendel  wrote:
> I'd like to switch my PATA drives to use the new libata drivers
> instead of the old ide drivers. Can someone point me to a howto or
> other document that explains what I need to change.
>
> Thanks,
>
> John

Get hold of the source code (http://kernel.org) and compile/build a new kernel.

[John Wendel]

Kam Leo wrote:
> On 4/27/07, John Wendel  wrote:
> > I'd like to switch my PATA drives to use the new libata drivers 
> > instead of the old ide drivers. Can someone point me to a howto
> > or other document that explains what I need to change.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > John
>
> Get hold of the source code (http://kernel.org) and compile/build a
> new kernel.

I've already built the new kernel ( 2.6.21 vanilla, released yesterday
). For now, I left the old IDE drivers in the build (as well as the
SATA drivers I need) because I wasn't sure what would break if I
dropped the old IDE drivers without doing some prep work first.

Thanks,

John

[Kam Leo]

On 4/27/07, John Wendel  wrote:
> Kam Leo wrote:
> > On 4/27/07, John Wendel  wrote:
> > > I'd like to switch my PATA drives to use the new libata drivers
> > > instead of the old ide drivers. Can someone point me to a howto
> > > or other document that explains what I need to change.
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > John
> >
> > Get hold of the source code (http://kernel.org) and compile/build a
> > new kernel.
>
> I've already built the new kernel ( 2.6.21 vanilla, released yesterday
> ). For now, I left the old IDE drivers in the build (as well as the
> SATA drivers I need) because I wasn't sure what would break if I
> dropped the old IDE drivers without doing some prep work first.

You're asking us about what will break with a new driver? You have the
process turned upside down. You adventurous types are supposed to tell
us what broke!

If you have no fear of loosing data, just let go of the old driver,
rebuild the new kernel, and use it.

If you have data you want to keep, back the data up on another medium
or drive (one that is not attached to the system when the new driver
is running), rebuild the kernel, and have at it.

I'm sure you know the risks: a) loss of data or b) loss of drive
> Thanks,
>
> John

[James Wilkinson]

John Wendel wrote:
> I've already built the new kernel ( 2.6.21 vanilla, released yesterday
> ). For now, I left the old IDE drivers in the build (as well as the
> SATA drivers I need) because I wasn't sure what would break if I
> dropped the old IDE drivers without doing some prep work first.

I understand that on a standard Fedora install, things should Just Work.
If you've changed fstab or grub.conf to refer to partitions as
/dev/hdxy, then you'll have problems.

One other potential problem -- if you have more than eleven logical
partitions on one disk, Linux will not be able to "see" them all. This
has to do with current limits on device numbering.

James.