Helllo all


Just a quick comment about the Seagate drives.. I am using a pair of Seagate drives in hardware RAID-0 configuration (UDMA6). Performance is good. I think Seagate's problems were with first generation drives and have since been corrected. This is under Redhat 9 - 2.4.20-8 kernel.


Drive configuration:

[root@localhost tony]# cat /proc/scsi/scsi
Attached devices:
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
Vendor: SiI Model: RAID 0 Set 0 Rev: 1100
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02
[root@localhost tony]# cat /proc/scsi/SiI6512/0
Driver for SiI 3112 to 6512 SATA RAID Controllers
Rev: 1.0.0.16, Date: Jul 18 2003 Time: 09:17:04
Memory (unique_id) at 0xDF002000, Irq 11
(Ri) Device(s) attached:
0: ST380013AS ( UDMA6 )
1: not attached
2: ST380013AS ( UDMA6 )
3: not attached

hdparm:

/dev/sda2:
Timing buffer-cache reads: 128 MB in 0.30 seconds =426.67 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 0.71 seconds = 90.14 MB/sec

Running RAID0? Those numbers make me really want to consider running RAID...

Hi again!

I complited a new kernel as you told me to do, but it didn't solve my problem. I checked all those sata/scsi sections and also the support for ICH5. With the new kernel, booting still takes about 10-15minutes and the message "Disabling irq #18" is still blinking. ICH5 SATA controller seems to be under the Mandrake Control center but the system is not working properly
So, Have You any ideas?

Okay, sorry to hear that.

My recommendation at this stage: Try Knoppix. If it works you have two options in IMHO.
a) switch to Debian
b) Copy the config-file (under /boot/confi-xyz) to any media (disc/usb/hardisk) and recompile your kernel using this file. You ned to set the new option there as well and I would stringly recommend to include the drivers and filesystems for your system as well as the Knoppixsystem is making use of an initrd, which is nothing but a pain in the neck if you don't really need it.
As an alternative to Knoppix you may try the SuSE 9.2 liveCD.

If either of the two don't solve your problem I won't be much help (particularly as I don't know were your IRQ 18 problem comes from . It may be completely unrelated from your ICH5)

Good luck!

What kernel are you compiling?

There is an option which 'allows' the old sata routines to compile in. This option is under the regular disk driver section (You will see it say something about SATA in the description).
You MUST turn this off for it to use the new libata library (The ones under scsi low level). Make sure you did that. It sounds like you have an IRQ conflict.. but it is hard to guess without more info.

deleted

The questions have been narrowed and reposted
at
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=290393

How can I give Sata Driver During Linux Installation process

Please Help

What distro do you want to install and which version?
What SATA-Controller do you want to use?
What have you tried so far?

Red Hat Linux 9
My Motherboard is Intel D101GGC
From Where I get the appropriate SATA driver for this board

I have no personal experience with that one

So you have an ATI IXP 450 that does the SATA-Work.
(ftp://download.intel.com/design/moth...D3610502US.pdf page 17)
You need to look for a Distro/kernelversion that does support this chip.
From what I found with aquick search it appears as if it was supported from 2.4.26 upwards.

How about giving (K)Ubuntu a try? The install and live-CD are indentical.

is SATA 2 support out yet?

Of course only for controllers that do support SATA 2 and of those only the ones that are supported within linux.
Some of the SATA 2 features are also included in the general Linux kernel.
See: http://linux-ata.org/sata-status.html

After having struggled many times with S-ATA setups on Linux distros like RedHat, Fedora Core and Suse finally with the help of some great luminous minds on this forum I have gotten S-ATA running with decent speeds. Since I am kind of a minimalist, I have been looking for the least effort and with the best results.

Here is what I did on the SuSe 9.1 machine:

In my case there are 3 disks: 2 x S-ATA 250Gb Maxtor and 1 x normal ATA 40Gb Maxtor

/dev/hda = S-ATA 250Gb Maxtor (=data storage)
/dev/hdc = S-ATA 250Gb Maxtor (=data storage)
/dev/hde = ATA 40Gb Maxtor (=system)

First tests showed that my S-ATA disks gave a 7.21 MB/sec and a stunning 1.88 MB/sec disk read.

So after having read this specific topic here on the forum I tried in a terminal:

and right after that I did in the same terminal:

And I got a stunning 68.17 MB/sec disk read!!!

So far this is working and the same I did for the hde disk. But what after a reboot? Tough luck. It is back at the 7 MB/sec again... back to the forum...

This is where I think the linux puzzle gets a bit awkward at times. Mind you, I kind of like puzzles at times but compiling new kernels, setting udma properties etc etc is not my strongest point. So there I saw huge lines of codes to be put in grub.conf. But now what? Ow yeah, I changed the configuration for this client to run on lilo.conf so what to do here? DO the same in lilo.conf? Or here is another one that puts a complete A4 size letter in /etc/rc.d/rc.local

This one looks promising, but Suse only has rc and no rc.local. Well I just did my thing in /etc/rc.d/rc , opened it in a text editor and added 2 lines in the rc file (just at the end, before the last "}".

these 2 lines I added in /etc/rc.d/rc

After having put these 2 lines in and a reboot, the S-ATA disks gave me the 66 MB/sec speed without doing anything. All things are set.

Hopefully this can help someone. Thanks for all the good advices on this topic!


Piet Nutbey
The Netherlands

Hmmm, I am surprised. Suse 9.1 has got a 2.6-kernel, thus your sata discs should come up as sdX not hdX IIRC. Did you configure your BIOS to use them in compatibility mode?
Concerning the speed. Is this a RAID0 (stripping) or RAID1 (mirror)? For RAID1 it is okay, for RAID0 there might be room for improvement (depening on the controller and Board)

First of all, most recent (and Suse 9.1 is NOT recent, in fact Suse just stopped the support for it) should use DMA as the default for all drives, so you shouldn't encounter these problems anymore (at least far less frequently), particularly with SATA as these settings affect IDE only (so far at least).
Have a look at http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Use_hdp...ce_performance
If you need to modify the hdparm settings and want this to used in future sessions, there is (at least for Debian based distros, such as (K/X)Ubuntu, Debian etc. and Gentoo an easier way. You need to modify the file /etc/hdparm.conf or /etc/conf.d/hdparm (gentoo).
Use man for details on your system - it is rather easy.

I have never managed to make hdparm to work with my sata drives (in retrospect it is probably a feature).
Seems SATA drives automatically work at the right speed.
So I also suspect your HD are working in legacy mode.