I've been running CentOS 4.4 on my Thinkpad 600E machine. Now the new 2.6.9-55 kernel wants to support the SCSI devices I don't have.
After the 4.4 --> 4.5 update, on the reboot kudzu informed me that it had detected my PIIX4 controller. Well, OK. That same chipset has been in this machine for 10 years, but if the OS wants to re-detected it that's fine with me.
FWIW, there's this:
# lspci | grep PIIX4 00:07.0 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ISA (rev 02) 00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01) 00:07.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 USB (rev 01) 00:07.3 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 02)
I also have a new entry auto-added to /etc/modprobe.conf:
alias scsi_hostadapter ata_piix
I also have kernel modules loaded that previously were not used:
ata_piix 14532 0 libata 99068 1 ata_piix sd_mod 15696 0 scsi_mod 112268 2 libata,sd_mod
For completeness I should note that /proc/scsi/scsi shows no attached SCSI devices.
Here, finally, is my question: why is my limited system RAM being wasted with device drivers I don't need?
It occurs to me that maybe CentOS 4.5 wants to handle my CD-ROM as a SCSI device. Is that done with plain old CD readers? This Sanyo CRD-S372B is far to old to actually write CDs and would probably burst into flames if I put a DVD disk into it.
So... any thoughts as to the sudden appearance of this SCSI support?
Thanks.