I'm trying to install CentOS 2.1 on SATA drive that lives on ICH7R controller. I have the controller setup in BIOS to "compatibility" mode, which means it should look just like regular IDE controller to the OS. In this mode, ide0 and ide1 are PATA controllers, and 4 SATA ports are mapped to ide2 and ide3.
If I boot from the 2.1 installation CD, all the drives are detected (CD-ROM as hda, and four SATA drives as hde, hdf, hdg, and hdh, just as expecte per above mappings). It detect IRQ for ide2/3 right away, and says it will probe for IRQ for ide0 later. Well, it hangs just after it probes and detects IRQ for ide0. I've tried all bunch of "standard" kernel options (turnning off DMA, disabling ACPI, and so forth), none of which helped.
If I install the OS on some other box (with older SATA controller), update the kernel to 2.4.9-e.70, move the disk to the new box, the kernel boots just fine (however, the initrd image points to the wrong root device -- and I can't really boot into rescue to fix it, since kernel on install CD will hang). Hence I attempted to rebuild 2.1 install CD with 2.4.9-e.70 kernel (which I haven't managed to do yet).
I also attempted to use CentOS 3.8 CD in rescue mode. However, regardless of my BIOS settings, it loads ata_piix drivers, and uses the controller in SATA mode, which isn't really what I want (mkinitrd trying to be too smart, but I have couple of tricks to try yet). I'm currently attempting to force it into PATA emulation mode by supplying "ide2=io1,io2,irq and ide3=io1,io2,irq" parameters, and it is going *very* slow and constantly complaining about lost interrupts.
Anyhow, if anybody has some advice with getting this 2.1 install going, it would be very appreciated.
On Thu, 2006-09-28 at 11:16 -0500, Aleksandar Milivojevic wrote:
I'm trying to install CentOS 2.1 on SATA drive that lives on ICH7R controller. I have the controller setup in BIOS to "compatibility" mode, which means it should look just like regular IDE controller to the OS. In this mode, ide0 and ide1 are PATA controllers, and 4 SATA ports are mapped to ide2 and ide3.
If I boot from the 2.1 installation CD, all the drives are detected (CD-ROM as hda, and four SATA drives as hde, hdf, hdg, and hdh, just as expecte per above mappings). It detect IRQ for ide2/3 right away, and says it will probe for IRQ for ide0 later. Well, it hangs just after it probes and detects IRQ for ide0. I've tried all bunch of "standard" kernel options (turnning off DMA, disabling ACPI, and so forth), none of which helped.
If I install the OS on some other box (with older SATA controller), update the kernel to 2.4.9-e.70, move the disk to the new box, the kernel boots just fine (however, the initrd image points to the wrong root device -- and I can't really boot into rescue to fix it, since kernel on install CD will hang). Hence I attempted to rebuild 2.1 install CD with 2.4.9-e.70 kernel (which I haven't managed to do yet).
I also attempted to use CentOS 3.8 CD in rescue mode. However, regardless of my BIOS settings, it loads ata_piix drivers, and uses the controller in SATA mode, which isn't really what I want (mkinitrd trying to be too smart, but I have couple of tricks to try yet). I'm currently attempting to force it into PATA emulation mode by supplying "ide2=io1,io2,irq and ide3=io1,io2,irq" parameters, and it is going *very* slow and constantly complaining about lost interrupts.
Anyhow, if anybody has some advice with getting this 2.1 install going, it would be very appreciated.
Alexandar, when you get your system up, if you run dmesg...does it show where it's picking the drive up?
reason I asked...I am presently setting up an external hd thru usb...kudsu never asked about it but dmesg said it sees the drive and calls it sda...I'm trying to incorporate it in my raid arrays and I am so close but not there yet...got the drive partitioned exactly like the other 2 internal ides ...when I run cat /proc/mdstat all the arrays are showing w/it but you know when you add a drive mdadm /dev/md0 -- add /dev/sda1 etc for all the partitions...then run cat /proc/mdstat...you should see the drive populating but it doesn't...gotta do little more reading.
jr
Quoting rado rado@rivers-bend.com:
Alexandar, when you get your system up, if you run dmesg...does it show where it's picking the drive up?
Well, it's in the PATA emulation mode, so it picks it up as soon as kernel probes for IDE drives (no additional modules required).
Anyhow, I managed to get the initrd image fixed. However, the system hangs at random places when accessing the drives (after all file systems are mounted). So I guess CentOS 2.1 and ICH7R are not ment to be (at least on SuperMicro PDSMi motherboard). It's probably some small bug in IDE driver -- SATA configured in PATA emulation mode should just work (worst case is it would work in PIO mode). Unless Intel screwed up something bad in the chipset.
On the other hand, CentOS 3.8 runs fine on the same hardware with SATA in native mode (with AHCI disabled) so it might be an option too. However, it has some similar symptoms to CentOS 2.1 if I force it to PATA compatibility mode.
As a side note, CentOS 4.4 runs with AHCI enabled, and also seems to show some problems if I force system to PATA compatibility mode. Hmmm...
Aleksandar Milivojevic spake the following on 9/28/2006 11:53 AM:
Quoting rado rado@rivers-bend.com:
Alexandar, when you get your system up, if you run dmesg...does it show where it's picking the drive up?
Well, it's in the PATA emulation mode, so it picks it up as soon as kernel probes for IDE drives (no additional modules required).
Anyhow, I managed to get the initrd image fixed. However, the system hangs at random places when accessing the drives (after all file systems are mounted). So I guess CentOS 2.1 and ICH7R are not ment to be (at least on SuperMicro PDSMi motherboard). It's probably some small bug in IDE driver -- SATA configured in PATA emulation mode should just work (worst case is it would work in PIO mode). Unless Intel screwed up something bad in the chipset.
On the other hand, CentOS 3.8 runs fine on the same hardware with SATA in native mode (with AHCI disabled) so it might be an option too. However, it has some similar symptoms to CentOS 2.1 if I force it to PATA compatibility mode.
As a side note, CentOS 4.4 runs with AHCI enabled, and also seems to show some problems if I force system to PATA compatibility mode. Hmmm...
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There must be some pressing issues to go to all the trouble of installing 2.1 on new hardware. It is probably closed and in maintenance only state.
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Aleksandar Milivojevic -
rado -
Scott Silva