[Centos] 3.1 on ASUS SK8V SATA problem

[C. Linus Hicks]

On Mon, 2004-05-31 at 22:18, C. Linus Hicks wrote:
> This is my first post to this mailing list, although I have been reading
> it for a while. Please forgive the length of my message. Also, great
> work!
> 
> I'm trying to get Centos-3 running on an ASUS SK8V Opteron motherboard
> in a way that is useful for me. I've had some success, but now I'm stuck
> on a problem with the SATA driver.
> 
> Okay, so I got it up on the network by replacing sk98lin with the one
> from 2.4.26. While I'm pretty confident that's not a supported thing to
> do, the machine is pretty useless to me off the network. I know I could
> throw a supported adapter in it, but it works as is.
> 
> By the way, my intention is to get a native amd64 distribution of Linux
> running and my preference is that it be a RedHat derivative. I am not
> able to tell from the cAos web site whether there are any plans to
> release an amd64 version of Centos. The only reference I see to that
> platform is in the FAQ and looks specific to cAos. There are amd64
> sources on RedHat's web site for rhel3. My experience of Centos so far
> is of it being i386 centric.
> 
> So, the problem I hit. I installed Centos-3 using the iso images onto a
> couple of SCSI drives I have in the system, then got the 2.4.21-15
> kernel update and enabled SATA support. Through a series of modprobes, I
> got it to recognize the drive. However, it didn't find a valid partition
> table, and the geometry is way off. My SATA disk is a WD740GD, a 74GB
> drive. Fdisk thinks it is 30MB, 255 heads, 63 sector/track, 3 cylinders.
> 
I realized /dev/hda was the CDROM drive, which was why fdisk got what it
did. The SATA drive apparently isn't recognized.

> Have I done something wrong, or is the VIA SATA support in this kernel
> just not gonna hack it? The SK8V uses the VIA VT8237 southbridge chipset
> if anyone knows about this.
> 
> Thanks for any help.
-- 
C. Linus Hicks <lhicks at nc.rr.com>