Linux Installation : Sata?
 

I just bought a brand new AMD64 3200+ with a Soyo CK8 Drag. I proceeded to install Fedora and just about any other OS and it has random errors. I just updated my BIOS and tried again. I always seem to get Kernel VFS Panic. Is it not finding my hard drive?

After useless attempts, I tried to get SATA to work and that was definitely nothing great. So I finally decided to put in my IDE drive and give it whirl. Well..same deal. I have SATA disabled, meaning nothing is plugged into the socket. The only thing that is standing is the IDE Drive which is a Western Digital.

Primary IDE (0) = Western Digital 160GB
Slave= NONE

Sec. IDE (1)= DVD Drive
Slave = NONE

SATA(3) = NOTHING

Standard Keyboard and mouse and nothing extraneous is on the computer such as anything PCI. Just my Nvidia Geforce 5200.

If anyone knows anything that can at least be tried, please let me know. I've tried knoppix and other distros I had laying around. I've even tried Fedora AMD64 ..and in process of DLing Mandrake AMD64..

Any ideas?

My first (and possibly only) thought is to check the bootloader configuration (/etc/lilo.conf if you are using lilo). The kernel is getting loaded but is possibly wrongly informed about the location of the root partition (or initial ramdisk if you are using one).

You say you have tried Knoppix, but that should not be touching your disks at all (except to read the partition table and maybe using the swap partition). If Knoppix won't boot off CD I'm not sure what you can do, except maybe check or vary BIOS settings.

Hi,

I think I have posted this already somewhere in this forum:

I could boot SuSE9.0 with standard-kernel 2.4 from a S-ATA drive by just typing "APIC" on boot-prompt.

I had more problems getting a Kernel2.6 to boot from this drive, but I managed it by taking the knoppix26 config and compiled the SuSE sources for the 2.6.3 kernel. After this, the kernel at least recognised the drive, but lost it's IRQ during boot. But then I included the SCSI S-ATA drivers into my kernel and I was able to mount root on /dev/sdax (not /dev/hda unfortunately).

What I did, probabely only a newbie would do, but it worked for me...

But I still do not know which config-file entry finally caused this success. Several attempts of modifying the default SuSE config file to be more similar to the knoppix-one failed: unable to mount root because of an undetected S-ATA drive.

Markus

I got caught the same way upgrading 2.4 -> 2.6. I did not realise the drive would switch to /dev/sda. This makes it hard to dual boot 2.4 and 2.6 kernels as you have to change /etc/fstab.

I also had to fiddle around with the kernel config file. Things are working with the following options set (Intel chipset on m/b):

CONFIG_SCSI=y
CONFIG_SCSI_PROC_FS=y
CONFIG_SCSI_SATA=y
CONFIG_SCSI_ATA_PIIX=y
CONFIG_I2O_SCSI=m
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_PIIX=y
CONFIG_SCSI_ATA_PIIX=y
CONFIG_I2C_PIIX4=y

Not sure if all of those are needed, but they don't seem to do any harm.

Did you try it with a smaller capacity. IMO, putting LINUX on a 160 GB hard drive is waste. Use something like a 40 GB or 60 GB.

WHEW!
 

Alrighty guys, for some reason, this PC2700 DDR was screwy and doesn't work with the board , even though it should?

It's CENTON..

Anyway, I got everything running and EVEN XP seems to work without flaw..even though it's still the 32b version.

I got the Fedora AMD64 installed, well..that was crap. Random things didn't work in compiling. I went back to Fedora Core 1 and I'm compiling the kernel for Opteron\K8\AMD64..

Is that what I should be doing?

I'm new the whole different architecture thing. I've been using I386 on my AXP for awhile now, and I just want to make sure I'm okay. Would I have to replace RPMS with the 64 bit version?