I am using the (basic) Gentoo live cd and I got my Promise 376 to work with the module. I finished my install but I get a kernel panic:

"VFS: cannot open root device "804" or 08:04
Please append a correct "root" boot option"

The array appears at /dev/sda and I can boot into my WinXP from lilo which is at /dev/sda1 without any problems.

This is what I tryed:
"cp /root/ft3xx.o /lib/modules/2.4.20-gentoo-r8/kernel/drivers/scsi/"
and I added "ft3xx" to "/etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.4"

but it doesn't seem to load it at boot time.

Do I need to do modprobe first?
I can't now because I run of the Live CD and modprobe will only add modules to the CD kernel even when i'm chrooted.

Did I do something wrong or is there any way to compile the module "into" the kernel?

I hope someone can help me.

If you followed the howto they say to put this in your lilo.conf;
append="root=/dev/hda3 init=/linuxrc"

delete root=/dev/hda3
so u get
append="init=/linuxrc"

but how could u install the 376 drivers? pls explain us we will be happy to hear ure story.

Thanx for the reply, I was hoping for a reply. I'm just sitting here and clicking refresh like 5 time a minute.

Getting the Promise 376 RAID controller wasn't too hard after some googling.
I used this module here
Because the Live CD doesn't have unzip I had to download them on a WinXP and then I uploaded them to my ftp.
Finally I just had to wget the whole directry they were in, then
run make, and insmod ft3xx.o (modprobe won't work on the Live CD because it tries to add the module to the cd's module directory (which is of course read only,) btw it won't even modprobe when you are chrooted.

So that was my short story about getting my 2 SATA drives to work .

Now I'll try to get those drives to boot...

Lol yeah got that driver too but what I am trying is to build a SUSE 9 driver update disk, ;-)
I want to use it for my main workstation, and on a dev machine I gone install gentoo I think....
I hope my tip(I got it from the gentoo forums) works

hmm still no luck, I removed the "root=/dev/sda4" from "append="root=/dev/sda4 init=/linuxrc" but it doesn't have any effect.

I have also recompiled the kernel (so I dind't use genkernel) but that didn't help either.

I am really starting to think that the module isn't copied in the right place or isn't accepted by the kernel or something else, maybe it's just the wrong place for auto loading modules at boot time.

BTW: could somebody tell me how to compile modules (any blah.o file) _into_ the kernel so they don't even have to be put into some directory and in some script files but are loaded when the kernel starts up? Or is that just not possible/to complicated?

Please give me a hint, just here to put the stuff or something like that.

Are you trying to install SuSE or do you have to use a disk to get the driver inside? lol. I guess if some other distro would have native support for the Promise 376 then that would help alot and I would probably switch. Do the other distro's also have such a lilo.conf mess or is that handeld automatically while installing?

I want to start my Linux now! this sucks

I had the same problem with slackware (boot from hdd) and now I'm thinking I'm just to stupid for this lol.

Could somebody just tell me where to put the module or how compile modules (any blah.o file) _into_ the kernel so they don't even have to be put into some directory and in some script files but are loaded when the kernel starts up? Or is that just not possible/to complicated?

WCprof
thanx for any help/replies

I have to use a disk to get it inside.

Still

FOUND IT I hope

Promise has made a Suse 9 driver avaible on their website after a pissed off email from me

Tonight I gone try it

I had a similar problem.
It turns out that the kernel uses SCSI drivers to access the ATA RAID
(in my case PATA RAID1) and loads SCSI support and low level driver MEGARAID. Because it booted from a live CD it loaded those as modules.
genkernel copies the boot config and creates a kernel that loads them as modules - problem is they are needed way before that to mount '/'
Solution is to run genkernel --menuconfig all and include (mark with *) both SCSI support and the MEGARAID.

The irony is that the LiveCD genkernel includes dozens of unneeded modules and fails to include SCSI support for raid.

2.4.26-gentoo-r6