We have a number of systems running custom-built 2.6.24 kernels on Dell GX280s. This motherboard has a SATA controller and we had the BIOS set for "compatibility mode" instead of "native" so that it could talk to downlevel OSes. The drive itself is a SATA drive. The 2.6.24 kernel detects it as IDE and presents the drive as /dev/hda.

We are now looking at upgrading the kernel to 3.10.39 and we are observing that the drive is now being detected as SATA and presented as /dev/sda.

For historical reasons, we are using "/dev/xxx" references and not UUID references for the drives. So, the new kernel panics when it cannot mount the root on /dev/hda3.

We understand that we can change the bootloader parms and /etc/fstab and/or use UUIDs, but we would like to see if there is another way.

We investigated kernel boot options like "combined_mode" but they do not seem to be applicable. We do not readily see a setting for this in the config file for the kernel build.

What we would like to do is have the default for a SATA/IDE capable controller to be IDE instead of SATA, for these legacy systems.

Is there a way to accomplish this, or can someone point us to the general area of the source code where this decision is made?

Thanks.

Hi

What about symlinks and/or udev-rules?
Have a look at e.g. this.

Thanks for that info.

I was hoping to avoid UUIDs, etc. and force the kernel to continue to default to the IDE driver for this controller.

Does anyone know approximately where in the kernel code the decision is made to bind to a controller with the SATA driver versus the IDE driver, when the controller reports that it is compatible with both?