My distro is SuSE 8.1 and I've installed it on an older machine that I've
completely leveraged to the maximum. The computer is a PII-266MHz with 256 Meg RAM circa 1997.

The computer has one CD-ROM, one CD/RW, one floppy, one Zip-100, and TWO hard
drives. The hard drives are newer and couldn't be read by the controllers on
the motherboard. So...I purchased a Promise Technology Ultra 133TX PCI card for the drives.

One CD-ROM is connected to the primary controller on the motherboard. The CD/RW and Zip are connected to the secondary controller on the motherboard.

The 30G hard drive is connected to the primary controller on the Ultra 133TX
card and the 10G hard drive is connected to the secondary controller on the
Ultra 133TX card.

The problem is that SuSE only wants to see the hard drive connected to the
primary controller on the card. I've swapped the drives on the card and it
doesn't matter - SuSE sees the one drive connected to the primary controller.

The drive is shown in fstab as /dev/hde1.

Other information:
1) I've connected a 120G external USB hard drive and SuSE sees that just fine.
(/dev/sda1)

2) I've examined the BIOS in setup when the computer boots. Neither drive
connected to the Ultra 133TX card appears there.

3) The computer boots just fine (I'm using it to write this) despite neither
drive appearing in the BIOS.

4) The computer is dual-boot Windows XP / SuSE 8.1 Professional Windows sees
both drives without any problems. Those are the C drive and D drive.

5) Both hard drives are formatted FAT32 with a partition for Linux on the hard
drive connected to the primary controller on the card. Linux runs from
/dev/hde6 with /dev/hde5 being the Linux swap file.

6) Block Devices in Control Center doesn't show that the 2nd hard drive exists.

I would like to make use of the 2nd drive from Linux but I'm at a dead stop
without Linux being able to even acknowledge the drive exists.

Does anyone have guideance on a resolution or insights to the problem?

codegomer

1. Try command 'ls -l /proc/ide'. Any sign of the drive? I guess it would show up as /dev/hdg (or something after hde anyway. If it's there you should be able to run fdisk on it and mount it.

2. Any reference to the drives in the system logs? Check the output of the 'dmesg' command.

3. Try both drives on the primary controller? You would have to make sure the HD jumpers are set so that one drive is master and the other slave.

I don't really have much of a clue what could be wrong, but hopefully a couple of suggestions might be better than nothing.

maroonbaboon,

Thanks for the insights. I would have expected the drive to appear as /dev/hdg also. 'dmesg' has one reference to the device hdg. Here's an excerpt from the log.

PDC20269: FORCING BURST BIT 0x50 -> 0x51 INACTIVE
ide2: BM-DMA at 0xff90-0xff97, BIOS settings: hdeio, hdfio
ide3: BM-DMA at 0xff98-0xff9f, BIOS settings: hdgio, hdhio

I believe this indicates Linux has the potential to see the dirve since it reports ide3 and hdg. The drive Linux does see is ide2 hde.

Any other ideas on where to go from here?

codegomer

I think that is maybe the interface rather than the drive itself that is detected. I thought I remembered some reference to these Promise cards in the kernel configuration - there are lots of switches/bugfixes in the config file. Could you have run aground on one of those?

If you can get a live CD (like knoppix) you could try booting from that and see if it finds your drive. That would narrow things down to your current kernel/drivers.

maroonbaboon,

I got a copy of Knoppix and booted from CD. Knoppix reports the drive as hdg1 just like I would expect. You must be correct in that the problem is with the SuSE kernel.

Thanks for the guidance. I'm not sure where to go in SuSE to cause SuSE to see the drive but I learned a great deal about Linux and Knoppix going through this exercise.

codegomer

Nice to hear a success story! Knoppix-wise anyway. You can install knoppix on your HD, which is how I got my current Debian distro. If you get a more recent SuSE/Fedora or whatever with a more up-to-date kernel you might be OK. If these are SATA drives (thin wire connectors) then only recent kernels will support them in SATA mode.

I can't see any Promise specific options in the 2.4.21 kernel, but the 2.6.3 kernel has

CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_PROMISE

and if you are using SATA drives they appear as SCSI devices /dev/sda etc. Which confused me no end while trying to upgrade to 2.6 kernel.

Just an update for anyone reading. I've installed SuSE 9.0 and Mandrake 9.2 on the machine. It's triple-boot with Windows XP.

Both SuSE 9.0 and Mandrake 9.2 see the second hard drive appears as hdg exactly like I would expect. Everything is great. In fact, I have Mandrake on the first drive with the swap file on the second. The machine is a PII 266 MHz with 256M RAM and it is pretty quick. Not much waiting for anything.

Lesson learned. Get the latest and greatest to make your life easier.

codegomer