Ok, so here is my problem. I have a Sager NP9880 Laptop with Promise SATA FastTrack 378 Controller. Problem is that it is set up in ATA mode (not raid) which is not supported by default.

If you will refer to this link:

http://en.opensuse.org/HCL/RAID_Controllers

You can see that the ATA mode is supported with a custom kernel build, but here is my problem. I have no idea how to create a custom kernel for installation cd.

So here are my questions:

How do I create a custom kernel without having linux already installed (though I have gotten ubuntu to work so the patch must work, but no other distro will detect my HD's.)?

And furthermore, how do I go about using the custom kernel for a fresh install of OpenSuSe 10.0?

Someone please help, I'm desperate after a few months of trying to figure this all out on my own.

What follows is purely theoretical, but I like to know how it could be achieved myself, so let me think out loud:

In theory, you could modify an existing boot.iso. You can mount the iso, extract initrd and exchange its kernel for your modified version. Unfortunately, I didn't find a config file of that particular kernel.

So the difficulty is to find a system on which you can build your custom kernel which will work with the SUSE installer. I guess a SUSE LiveCD could do the job. But still you need to find a kernel config you can use as a template. There may be an option to boot the installation kernel (boot.iso) and change to command-line, then extract the config with zcat /proc/config.gz.

Yeah, thats pretty much what I was thinking. I have installed Suse 10 on a friends computer, but havent had time to go any further since. The patch link supplied by open suse is only for the 2.6.16 kernel, so Here is what I believe I'm going to have to do.

Step 1 would be to upgrade my friend's computer to 2.6.16 kernel. From there I can download the patched libata file with "hopefully" a sata_promise module that can handle PATA mode. Then I will obviously patch the file and recompile with the updated module.

The Suse 10 Installer comes with 2.6.13 kernel, so the module won't do me any good to just replace the sata_promise.ko module on the installer cd. Therefore I am going to have to create a custom install cd with the 2.6.16 kernel (which is ok by me becuase at the same time I can include updated software and other little things.)

I have never made a custom install cd, but I don't think it is too difficult. I think for the kernel all I will have to do is decompress the initd and replace the old kernel with the new. As far as adding new software and custom stuff goes, I'm not sure how to go about that (I havent taken a look at how the cd is setup yet.

If anyone can give any insight on this that would be appreciated. Also, if all else fails, I can always buy another hd for the laptop since the sata_promise module supports the RAID setup, just not the PATA. (Grrr).