[CentOS-devel] sata_via and WD drives incompatibility patch

[Ned Slider]

On 04/05/11 08:31, Dmitry E. Mikhailov wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> I was hit by an infamous hardware incompatibility between VIA VT6420/1 sata
> card (sata_via) and newer Western Digital drives.
>
> The bug has been worked around in mainline kernel at 2.6.32.7,
>   	 * https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15173
>   	 * http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ide/46352
> 	 * http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1062139
>
> The sata_via patch from bug#15173 applies cleanly to sata_via module of
> 2.6.18-238 and now I'm running using a 'fixed' module with no problem.
>
> Unfortunately the patched module uses symbols not from kABI whitelist so
> universal replacement kernel module could not be made, but the patch itself
> could be integrated to upstream's tree or into the CentOS-Plus kernel. As I'm
> not a RHEL subscriber, I can only ask for the latter.
>
> Any ideas?
>
>
> Best regards,
> 	Dmitry Mikhailov

Hi Dmitry,

There are actually 3 relevant patches in the latest upstream kernel 
(2.6.38.5) for this issue:

2010-11-19     Tejun Heo    sata_via: apply magic FIFO fix to vt6420 too
2010-06-02     Tejun Heo    sata_via: magic vt6421 fix for transmission
problems...
2010-06-07     Tejun Heo    sata_via: explain the magic fix


ELRepo has updated drivers for sata_via available that fix this issue 
for both EL5 and EL6:

http://elrepo.org
http://elrepo.org/tiki/kmod-sata_via
http://lists.elrepo.org/pipermail/elrepo/2011-May/000660.html

As this isn't really a CentOS Development issue, can I ask that we take 
any discussion of the above to the elrepo mailing lists and/or bug tracker:

http://lists.elrepo.org/mailman/listinfo/elrepo
http://elrepo.org/bugs/

Thanks.