Everything went suspiciously well during my install of LFS 3.2. Kernel build was sweet and all appears well. I included the necessary kernel options for PIIX4 and promise controllers, and pretty much config'd up the same was I've been doing for a long time now.

The problem is when booting LFS I get to see the PCI scan where I get a list of my IDE controllers (Onboard PIIX4 and Promise Ultra/66), and then we start listing the devices connected to the IDE system. I can see my first drive /hda, and my CD-ROM, /hdc but the system appears to hard lock when probing the first drive (/dev/hde) on the primary controler of the Promise card. IDE light (for that drive) stays on. Floppy light aslo. The primary drive ligt is off.

I've rebuilt the kernel and rechecked everything I can think of but now I'm stumped. Is there somewhere else should be looking?

BTW - mother hen is SuSE 7.3

MMkay. pulled the Promise Ultra/66 card and now I can boot. Looks and smells like a kernel config problem.

Sorry I don't have the answer to your problem, but it intrigues me. Did you get it sorted out? You didn't mention whether it worked fine with Suse or not. I was wondering what hardware you had on the Promise card, i.e. was it only the 1 hd (hde)? Oh & what do you have on it. One last question, I've never looked at lfs (yet), but I'm assuming you are booting with a floppy (Syslinux)?

I have the UltraTX2 (ATA100) & have had some probs with it in the past, but it all managed to sort itself out. I would like to play around with lfs at some point; it's possible I may again run into similar problems & I guess I'd like to find the solutions in advance.

Actually LFS loaded properly after moving the drive to the Secondary Master IDE position (onboard) rather than the Promise card. I tried the drive on the primary and secondary master devices on the promise card to no avail. I have yet to resolve this problem.

I used lilo on the MBR of my first disk, not a boot floppy.

I've had six drives on three controllers in one machine. I've never slaved a drive as I usually use them in software RAID and slaving just isn't a good idea in RAID5 (IMO).

Drives have been Quantum Fireball or newer Maxtor. All drives for any current production machines are 7200 RPM 40, 60, or 80GB.

Yes I've had troubles with _some_ quantum drives on Promise Ultra/66 controllers, but that was in 2.2.x kernels.

Yes I've had SERIOUS troubles with the Ultra/100 Tx2. Three different machines, Two different kernels, and all hard-locked in under 12 hours. I still have four of the cards sitting on the shelf just starting at me... _daring_ me to try them again.

incidentally I'm on my second build of LFS - this time using 3.3 doc and book. It's still a paint-by numbers regimen but I've learned a lot of good stuff. Looking forward to building my own Franken version this weekend from scratch with a lot of help from LFS and reading a lot of scripts from my other machines.

I'm supposed to be getting my grimy paws on a Maxtor ATA/133 controller this weekend and I'm sure I'll have something to say about it.