Hello, after updating my default (2.6.18) debian kernel to 2.6.24 (debian patched), i'm unable to mount my root partition.

It seems SATA doesn't load properly. I tried to enable about every setting in the menuconfig that had anything to do with SATA, without success. My board is the GigaByte P35C-DS3R (not sure about which SATA chipset, however it worked fine with the default 2.6.18-6 kernel).

The only thing i could find in the device drivers in the menuconfig was 'Serial ata (prod) and Parallel ata (experimental) drivers; enabled everything in there.

Hope someone can help me.

in the kernel line (in grub) add the option all_generic_ide

I do not know if this applies to debian or not but in Fedora drives used to be labeled hdX(pata) and sdX(sata, usb. etc). Now all the drives are labeled sdX.

Thanks for the quick replies. I tried several root=hdX and sdX with all_generic_ide, without any luck. However my old kernel outputs SCSI subsystem initialized and continues to boot. This kernel doesn't and just hangs on 'waiting for root filesystem'. Not sure if that has anything to do with it?

Ok i got it working now. After compiling about a dozen kernels, it looks like that enabling like every option did work out, i however misplaced the boot files the last time i compiled. Kinda stupid really.

Thanks anyway

I see you solved your problem but you bring up a good point, in that it is not clear during kernel compile what options are required to get sata to work. For example, if I use the HUGE kernel that has everything compiled in it, my sata dvd shows up as /dev/hdc but if I do a custom kernel, or use the generic kernel with everything as a module, it shows up as /dev/sr0.

I'm kind of confused about whether or not pata replaces ide. If not, how are they different?

For what it is worth, the options below are what I basically use for IDE/SCSI/SATA, or at least to start out with. Sometimes in dmesg you can see which one is chosen. I have a mboard with a sb700 and guessed the AMD pata would load but dmesg shows the ATI one loads instead.

For your specific problem I think/guess all you needed was to add scsi disk support, in addition to the options you already chose.


y Enhanced IDE/MFM/RLL disk/cdrom/tape/floppy support
-y Include IDE/ATA-2 DISK support
-y Include IDE/ATAPI CDROM support
-y IDE ACPI support
-y legacy /proc/ide/ support
-y Generic PCI IDE Chipset Support
-y AMD and nVidia IDE support
-y JMicron JMB36x support
-y Intel PIIXn chipsets support

y SCSI device support
-y legacy /proc/scsi/ support
-y SCSI disk support
-m SCSI CDROM support
-m SCSI generic support

y Serial ATA (prod) and Parallel ATA (experimental) drivers
-y AHCI SATA support
-y Intel ESB, ICH, PIIX3, PIIX4 PATA/SATA support
-y NVIDIA SATA support
-y AMD/NVidia PATA support
-y ATI PATA support
-y Generic ATA support
-y JMicron PATA support
-y Intel PATA MPIIX support

y=yes or built in kernel
m=module