Gentlemen,

currently I try to install SLES10 SP 1 or 2 on a GigaByte GA-8IPXDR-E Series board with two Xeon, 2 Gig RAM and a Digitus quad SATA controller with SIL3114 Chip.
I have two IDE disks connected to the onboard IDE 1 and two optical drives to the IDE 2 controller. On the SATA board three SATA disks are connected. No RAID is configured yet.

Installation works fine - a normal boot however fails. When booting in the safe mode I notice that all DMS's are disabled and ACPI is off.

Bios however set's up UDMA 5 for the drives (one with UDMA 2).

Enabling DMA with hdparm immediately stops all disk access (system hangs).

Is there anyone with similar experience and a work arround?
Probably it's a driver problem - howeber when I go through the driver list prior to the installation I can identify drivers for the SIL3144 and the onboard Intel E7501 chipset.

Martin

What is DMS? If you are saying that it boots fine in safe mode, then try the same things for your normal boot by passing the appropriate parameters to the kernel.

I don't recognise UDMA 5. I think that the highest any drive that I've had has been UDMA 3, although I think there was one (single vendor only??) spec after that. That would make UDMA 4 the highest that I know exists. You also say one drive is UDMA 2 (Do you mean the Bios is set to UDMA 2, or do you mean that you know that the drive is UDMA 2? And if so, what is set in the BIOS?).

It shouldn't be a problem to run a drive at a lower UDMA than the drive is rated (it causes an interface slowdown, but as, generally, drives are mechanically and not interface limited...) and, if you have two drives on a single interface, you should go for the lower setting, if the two differ.

If in any doubt, start from 'slow and safe' setting and increase incrementally. If that goes wrong, back off.

Which does suggest that there is something bad with DMA, somewhere.

My first thought would have been the Digitus/SIL3114, until all the data about the UDMA modes, which makes me think something to do with the UDMA modes is more likely. However, do you know whether the SIL3114 is being identified and the correct driver loaded?

Salasi,

thanks for your fast reply.

->What is DMS?
Sorry - that's a typo and means DMA

-> I don't recognize UDMA 5....
during startup before grub kick's in I get the following message:
PRI Master UltraDMA-5 S.M.A.R.T capable but disabled
...
SIL 3114 SATA Raid
...

Here is the board configuration:
GigaByte GA-8IPXDR E-Series (only two PCI slots)
BIOS Release date is 03/09/2004, BIOS Version is F4
CPU: mPGA 604 with Intel Xeon 2.6 GC, 512 kB cache
Intel Prestonia 400/533 Mc FSB

Chipset: RGE7501 host/memory controller and FW 82801 CA IO controller

I/O controller: NS PC87366

2 GB RAM installed

A lsmod shows the following modules. The modules I identify as board or disk specific device drivers are marked with an "*" - maybe there are more that I don't know

joydev, st, sr_mod, appamor, loop, dm_mod, uhci_hcd, usbcore, e1000, i2c_i801,
i2c_core, shpchp, pci_hotplug, 8139too, *mii, *i8xx_tco, *ide_cd, *cdrom, parport_pc,
lp, parport, ext3, jbd, *ata_piix, ahci, edd, processor, sg, *sata_sil, *libata,
*piix; sd_mod; *scsi_mod, *ide_disk, *ide_core

The Digitus SATA driver is "sata_sil".

The disk information obtained by hdparm is as follows. There are two IDE drives installed.
Auriga:~ # hdparm -I /dev/hda

/dev/hda:

ATA device, with non-removable media
Model Number: ST3250820A
Serial Number: 6QF51B9T
Firmware Revision: 3.AAF
Standards:
Supported: 7 6 5 4
Likely used: 7
Configuration:
Logical max current
cylinders 16383 64761
heads 16 1
sectors/track 63 255
--
CHS current addressable sectors: 16514055
LBA user addressable sectors: 268435455
LBA48 user addressable sectors: 488397168
device size with M = 1024*1024: 238475 MBytes
device size with M = 1000*1000: 250059 MBytes (250 GB)
Capabilities:
LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
Queue depth: 1
Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, no device specific minimum
R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 16 Current = 16
Recommended acoustic management value: 208, current value: 0
DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5
Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
Cycle time: no flow control=240ns IORDY flow control=120ns
Commands/features:
Enabled Supported:
* READ BUFFER cmd
* WRITE BUFFER cmd
* Host Protected Area feature set
* Look-ahead
* Write cache
* Power Management feature set
Security Mode feature set
SMART feature set
* FLUSH CACHE EXT command
* Mandatory FLUSH CACHE command
* Device Configuration Overlay feature set
* 48-bit Address feature set
SET MAX security extension
* DOWNLOAD MICROCODE cmd
* General Purpose Logging feature set
* SMART self-test
* SMART error logging
Security:
Master password revision code = 65534
supported
not enabled
not locked
frozen
not expired: security count
not supported: enhanced erase
HW reset results:
CBLID- above Vih
Device num = 0 determined by the jumper
Checksum: correct

A bit strange is the /etc/fstab. Here is an extract:

/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3250820A_6QF51B9T-part7 / ext3 ac
l,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3250820A_6QF51B9T-part1 /boot ext3 ac
l,user_xattr 1 2
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3250820A_6QF51B9T-part6 /home ext3 ac
l,user_xattr 1 2


I'm missing the exact device name as one can find it in /dev/... - however this is the fstab file as it was created by the SLES10 SP 2.

It is interesting to notice that during the disk partitioning when installing SLES the IDE drives were referenced as /dev/hd* and the sata devices as /dev/sd*.

Is this information helpful to you?

Currently I reached my wits' end.

Martin