[plug] re installind linux

[Brian Parish]

Gavin Chester wrote:

>   >-----Original Message-----
>   >From: plug-bounces at plug.org.au [mailto:plug-bounces at plug.org.au]On
>   >Behalf Of chris sisman
>   >Sent: Monday, 22 May 2006 16:49
>   >To: plug at plug.org.au
>   >Subject: [plug] re installind linux
>   >
>   >
>   >to Tomas G.
>   >It is a SATA hard drive.
>   >The disc cant be faulty as I have tried @ sets
>   >chris from albany
>
>Chris,
>
>I've read your occasional postings and felt your anguish and heavily
>contained frustration at your problems, and I've admired your determination
>to keep giving it a go :-)  It shouldn't be that hard, however for this
>respondent I think I just saw a glimmer of why it is.  In a word: SATA.
>
>I will probably be shot down because I haven't researched this matter that
>much, but recently I had my first experience with a SATA drive in my son's
>PC and it was a mixed bag.  SuSE installed with no problems and knoppix runs
>well off DVD, too.  However, he wanted Fedora on that drive and that's where
>we struck trouble.  Sometimes it wouldn't install, sometimes it would appear
>to install but then rebooting caused kernel panic.  We (ignorantly) tried
>passing various parameters to the kernel (like ide=nodma, acpi=off and so
>on).  Again, sometimes it wouldn't install, sometimes it would appear to
>install but fail after reboot.
>
>I did a VERY quick bit of googling and found reports that SATA support is
>inconsistent and dependant on the type of drive controller you have on your
>motherboard or your type of plug-in controller card.  If you can't find a
>distribution that supports your SATA directly you may find drivers
>somewhere.  But, I think I remember reading that you were having your first
>crack at Linux, so that is probably too complex to try (it would be for this
>near-newbie).
>
>Other than what I said above, the ultimate solution seems one of two
>options:
>1/  see if your BIOS allows support for legacy ATA drives.  It may be worded
>differently, but look for something that allows older drives or older
>operating systems to function with your SATA drive; or
>2/ failing that (1) working for you (it didn't for my son) the last option
>is to install a PATA drive (the recently superseded IDE type, you know?) and
>then everything should be fine for whatever distribution you want.
>
>Sadly, you may have to wait until the release of the next kernel version to
>see improved SATA compatibility and to be able to use that super-fast drive
>:-(.  At least that's what I've read.
>
>Let us know if I'm barking up the wrong tree, because I'm about to embark on
>my option 2/ with my son's PC.
>
>HTH
>
>Gavin.
>  
>
This is probably peripheral to the problem, but is perhaps relevant to Gavin's post:

Recently did an install on a client machine with a SATA drive.  Install 
was fine.  Initial boot was fine.  Configured network, printers etc.  
All looking good.  Reboot - kernel panic.

Took a while to figure out but:

SATA drives are mapped as SCSI devices
Printer was one of these fancy MFCs with photo card slots
Photo cards slots are mapped as SCSI devices
Guess what happens when you reboot with the printer plugged in and SDA 
gets mapped to the card reader instead of the system disk? ;-)

cheers
Brian