sata_nv NForce3 SATA driver on installer

[matt whiteley]

On Sat, 09 Oct 2004 23:35:51 -0400, Robert L Cochran
<cochranb at speakeasy.net> wrote:
> I have a lot of PATA hard drives laying around. I really want to use the
> SATA controllers on my MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum motherboard, but I'm loathe
> to buy an SATA hard drive. Instead I bought a serial ATA converter that
> plugs into a PATA drive and turns it into an SATA drive. I chose the
> Highpoint RocketHead 100 Serial ATA Converter.
> 
> For the test drive, I plugged the converter into an older (around 1999)
> 25.5 Gb IBM drive and connected that to the SATA1 controller on the
> motherboard. I booted off the FC3 x86_64 CD 1 to start the installation
> process, entering 'linux askmethod' at the prompt and selecting an NFS
> Image installation method.
> 
> The installation soon comes to a halt. The installer says it can't find
> any hard drives. I come to a panel offering me the chance to select
> drivers that might do what is needed. There is nothing in the list for
> Nvidia or NForce3 SATA, although a bunch of other SATA drivers are
> provided for other chipsets.
> 
> Since the installer is offering me the chance to provide a driver --
> good! -- I run over to another machine to see if I can get the sata_nv
> driver on a floppy disk. I succeed, press F2 on the installer panel, and
> get this message:
> 
> cannot find /tmp/drivers/modinfo, bad driver disk
> 
> Can anyone tell me what this is about?
> 
> What's the correct method of providing an external driver to the
> installer -- how do I do that correctly?
> 
> And finally, even though I couldn't get the driver loaded for a fresh
> installation of FC3T2 -- a fully updated FC3T2 drive with the 603 kernel
> will boot just fine as an SATA device. I was pleasantly surprised.
> smartd fails at boot time, and my Logitech QuickCam 4000 suddenly isn't
> recognized, but what the heck -- my FC3T2 drive is on SATA, and seems to
> work just fine.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Bob Cochran
> Greenbelt, Maryland, USA
> 
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> 
   Well, I have done some work with it and have still not gotten
   anywhere. Hopefully someone with more knowledge can help us out. My
   main question is with all of the other sata drivers builtin why is the
   nforce3 one not? Is the linux support not stable? It booted the FC2
   install fine and ran flawlessly until the 2.6.7 errata kernel when it
   needed massaging.

   Here is what I did.

   floppy\
   -->modinfo
   -->module-info
   -->modules.cgz
   -->modules.dep
   -->pcitable
   -->rhdd

   Modinfo and module-info have the same contents. I made both since the
   instructions referenced the modinfo but the fedora boot cd contains
   /modules/module-info.
   -----------------modinfo & module-info---------------------
   Version 0
   sata_nv
           scsi
           "nForce3 SATA"
   ---------------modules.cgz--------------------------------
   contains
   2.6.8.-1.541/x86_64/sata_nv.ko
   I pulled this out of the kernel-2.6.8-1.541.x86_64.rpm
   ------------------modules.dep-------------------------
   sata_nv: libata scsi_mod
   ----------pcitable----------------------------------------
   0x10de  0x00ee  "sata_nv"
   -----------rhdd--------------------------------------------
   nForce3 SATA Driver Disk
   --------------------------------------------------------------
   I then made a driver disk with:
   dd if=/dev/zero of=sata_nv.img bs=1024 count=1440
   mkfs -t msdos sata_nv.img
   mount sata_nv.img /tmp/floppy -t msdos -o loop
   {copy files to /tmp/floppy}
   umount /tmp/floppy

   After all of this the install appears to find the disk and let me load
   it, but it doesn't show up in "found devices" and when I switch to a
   terminal lsmod shows that sata_nv is not loaded.

   If you want the files, or find anything else out, let me know.

-- 
matt whiteley <mattwhiteley at gmail.com>