Slack and SATA
 

anyone running slack installed on a SATA drive? Im thinking of upgradind my HD's and moving over to SATA and ditching IDE all together,

anyone have this setup? Does linux support SATA yet? (i think it does.. but booting from SATA??)

I'm running on a Sata drive. If you can handle either compiling the 2.6.2 kernel and dropping it yourself... OR editing the initrd image (staying with the 2.4.22) then by all means, upgrade... Would you be buying a controller card? Is SATA capability built into your mobo? If so... what brand for each?

If you have a probise fastrack SATA150 or you have the promise controller built into your motherboard, I have a guide and a couple of files ready for you.

ill be buying a card, I was wanting to do a fresh install, would it be best, to compile 2.6.x put it on a a floppy (if it will fit) and just load that kernel on boot with a fresh install?

EDIT: not sure what card I will be getting, I'm trying to get some new up-to-date computer equipment, I like to upgrade systems buy buyinga processor and MB, but all my RAM, HD's CD-ROM drives are starting to get out-of-date. So im looking to start getting some new hardware.

I'm running Slackware 9.1 installed on a SeaGate SATA 80 gig with an onboard Silicon Image 3112 controller. Slackware's bare.i kernel successfully detects and boots with the harddrive mapped to /dev/hde.
However, if you're planning on using 2.6.2 you may have problems, I have not yet successfully booted 2.6.2 with my SATA drive, as it does not detect the controller at all. All of the SATA patches seem to be limited to 2.4.2x, as after that the methods for handling SATA drives were changed entirely. Slackware 9.1 out of the box will install flawlessly with SATA as far as I have experienced, but if you plan on booting and installing with 2.6.x on SATA, you'll either have to wait for the patching teams to catch up, for yet-unreleased versions of the kernel, or learn something that I havn't. ; )

I'm having a lot of probelsm with the 2.6.2 kernel too. Well if you can't get the 2.4.22 kernel to recognize your drive, but you do get a module that works, let me know and I'll tell you the whole process. (Yeah there is more than just running "setup".

ill keep that in mind.. Ill want a 2.6.x kernel with my setup. Is it just 2.6.2 specifically or 2.6.x having problems altogether?

Well I couldn't get the framebuffer to work in 2.6.1 but everything else seemed OK. In 2.6.2... I still can't get the framebuffer to work and some of the modules I use won't load properly (the ones that come with 2.6.2).


And about the Frame Buffer... yeah i rewad the posts on how to fix it... but my problem is weird.

To Trey:

Okay I found support for my SATA controller (Sil3112) in the kernel config that I had previously overlooked in 2.6.2. Although I have yet to test this, I see no reason for it not to work. I'd say it's a safe bet, and if all else fails you can fall back on 2.4.2x.