ok, i have Suse 8.2 and a intel d845pebt2 mobo w/ on board serial ATA(which i don't use)
When booting linux trys to find drives on ide2 and ide3(the serial ide's). it the reports an invalid response. the whole thing wastes like 25-30 seconds. how can i fix this? btw, there's no option in the bios to disable the serial ata

I'm not sure if I understand your problem... In Redhat, we have a tool called "services" located at:

/usr/bin/redhat-config-services

That you can run from command line with "redhat-config-services"... With this tool, you can choose which "services" are going to be used at the boot up. I'm sure there might be a similar tool to Suse, but I don't know how it's called...
Well, I wish you good luck.

What you want is YAST2 -> System -> Runlevel Editor

It's fairly self-explanitory.
I don't have this hardware so i don't know which init.d script is being used to load it. If you get stuck, you can post a short section leading up to where it hangs and we can try and make an educated guess.

i checked out the run level editor and still don't know what to change. here is the prob. The no response part:

<6>ICH4: chipset revision 2
<6>ICH4: not 100%% native mode: will probe irqs later
<6> ide0: BM-DMA at 0xffa0-0xffa7, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbMA
<6> ide1: BM-DMA at 0xffa8-0xffaf, BIOS settings: hdcMA, hddMA
<6>SiI3112 Serial ATA: IDE controller at PCI slot 02:06.0
<6>SiI3112 Serial ATA: chipset revision 1
<6>SiI3112 Serial ATA: not 100%% native mode: will probe irqs later
<6> ide2: MMIO-DMA at 0xf8817c00-0xf8817c07, BIOS settings: hdeio, hdfio
<6> ide3: MMIO-DMA at 0xf8817c08-0xf8817c0f, BIOS settings: hdgio, hdhio
<4>hda: Maxtor 6Y080P0, ATA DISK drive
<4>hdb: WDC WD1200JB-75CRA0, ATA DISK drive
<4>blk: queue c03ac0c0, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
<4>blk: queue c03ac214, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff)
<4>hdc: JLMS DVD-ROM LTD163D, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
<4>hdd: LITE-ON LTR-52246S, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
<4>hde: no response (status = 0xfe)
<4>hdg: no response (status = 0xfe)
<4>ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
<4>ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
<4>hda: attached ide-disk driver.
<4>hda: host protected area => 1

Try disabling boot.md and boot.lvm - just select that line and remove the check from the B box at the bottom then save and reboot and see what happens. boot.md is for raid and boot.lvm is for logical volumes. I think boot.md is the one that will do it for you.

HTH

I just wanted to add that if neither of these options works, you could try disabling harware scan on boot (from the run level editor as well). I didn't suggest it before because it seems like you're hanging prior to that point. It's a good thing to disable anyway - especially if you aren't changing your hardware.

thanks, but it didn't do anything

see my edit.

nope, still doesn't do it

Theres a thread at alt.os.linux.suse that is asking the same question. You may want to follow it.

Also, there is a new web forum at this address. It's very new and not too active yet, but you may get some leads here. Just SuSE.

http://www.suseforums.com/support/

The only other thing i can suggest is passing an option to the kernel at boot along the lines of ACPI=OFF for disabling acpi. But I have no idea what that would be.

Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

I just wanted to give you a heads-up on that alt.os.linux.suse thread.

They resolved your problem by passing a kernel option through grub.

hdx=none I believe it was. If you haven't checked it out do so. If you don't have usenet access let me know and I'll post the relevent threads.

regards

steve

I've a Gigabyte "GA-7VAXP ultra" Board and had absolutely the same problem with SuSE 8.2 installation as PalluX.
I could install suse with "safe settings". So I had no real problems with the installation.

My System: "GA-7VAXP ultra" / hda, hdb, DVD on IDE2 / hde, hdf, hdg, hdh on IDE 2&3 (second controller only as supplementary hd-controller used - not as raid) / sda, sdb, SCSI burner, SCSI CD-ROM / SATA not used.

For the moment suse works, but...
on booting IDE0, IDE1, IDE2 and IDE3 are recognized with all harddisks, DVD-ROM too.
then about 30 seconds nothing, then the response
hda : no response (status 0fxe)
then about 30 seconds nothing, then
hdb : no response (status 0fxe)

After booting and logging in, I get a working system but the installation of SuSE 8.2 on hda5 and all partitions of hda are listed up as hde-partitions.
So root is on hde5 instead of hda5 - as it is in reality!
Up to now i've no connection to the IDE2 and IDE3 harddisks.
With Knoppix 3.2 I have no problems - all disks and partitions are present as installed !?!?

Do you know more about this problem? Ideas of solutions? Internetlinks?

Thanks and regards
Istvan