[plug] re installind linux

[Ian Kent]

On Tue, 23 May 2006, 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 is to install a PATA drive (the recently superseded IDE type, you know?)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.

Or longer for the VIA VT8251.

You may have already seen these pages:

http://linux-ata.org/

and

http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html

Ian