How to stop SuSE from looking for SATA on a A7N8X-Deluxe v.2
 

I just bought SuSE 9.1 Pro, which so far has been pretty cool. Not as smooth an install as 9.0 but I like all the updated packages. My mother supports SATA, which I don't use, and has no bios-based method for disabling the controller. My super-fast booting SuSE 9.1 takes almost two minutes to search for SATA drives that are not there. Does anyone know a good method for disabling the SATA check during boot with the option of turning it back on if I buy an SATA drive in the future?

Try passing something like hde=noprobe hdg=noprobe to the kernel. Add this to the kernel line in your /boot/grub/menu.lst if you use Grub. If you use Lilo, add it to the append= line in /etc/lilo.conf and make sure it's not commented out (beginning with a "#" (pound) character), then rerun /sbin/lilo.


Håkan

I actually got the same board, you can disable SATA - however you can't do it
via the BIOS, you need to do it via a jumper setting:

On the board look for the SATA_EN1 jumper (it's located near the lithium cell) -
change the setting from 1-2 (default) to 2-3 (disabled).

The advantage is that this way the BIOS won't look for SATA devices either
before initiating the boot sequence. (Which takes quite some time too).
And of course Linux will also stop looking for the devices.


Cheers


Stefan

Somehow when I switched from Slackware w/ 2.4.24 to Gentoo w/ 2.6.4 the boot sequence stopped looking for hde(g). I don't know if it's something in the new kernel I built or not, but I was just too lazy to mess with it before :) It's not like I ever rebooted anyway.

Now, my PC boots in around 15 seconds as opposed to 55 w/ Slack.

Thanks Stefan. I can't believe I missed the jumper (I actually had looked for one). Must have been a Monday when I looked. Thanks again...