which kernel works best with SATA?
 

Hi. Running 2.4.26 kernel atm and it works fine with my sata drives. They're recognized as hdc and hde. Not much to talk about.

But...
After compiling 2.6.8 kernel i get the message "unable to mount root fs" at startup.
Now theres tons of threads handling this area mostly telling ppl to change their lilo.conf from hdx -> sdx. This dont work for me.

So what im wondering is:
1, which kernel supports SATA the best?

2, where can i find information that carefully goes through what the different kernels support, in terms of SATA?

3, has anyone had this problem and solved it in that case, HOW?

4, could i have checked/unchecked some wrong options when i made my .config so that it doesnt work? what options would that be in this case.




I have a epox 8rda3+ mobo and to two sata seagate discs.
running slackware 10.0

/zvn

1. In general, the newest stable kernels will support hardware with fewest bugs. But provided that SATA is compiled in, you shouldn't normally have any problems unless a) you have a hardware fault or b) you have a partiularly obscure SATA controller that has non-standard behaviour; I do not think this is common with SATA controllers.

2. Kernel documentation can generally be found in /usr/src/linux/Documentation. Note that support for a piece of hardware is rarely — if ever — removed, so you should find that each kernel version supports the same hardware as pervious versions/releases, possible with additional support or tweaks added in.

4. Yes, quite easily. You need to have compiled-in support for SATA, your particular SATA controller, your particular PCI (or other bus) controller to which the SATA controller connects, and possibly even the partition table algorithm you're using (if you're not using a standard partition table).

You will also need to compile in support for the partition types for the partitions upon which reside the following directories reside: / /etc/ /usr/lib/modules. (e.g. if you have a ReiserFS root partition, and your / /etc and /usr/lib/modules directories are all on that partition, then you need to compile in support for ReiserFS).

Hope that helps,

—Robert J. Lee

Finally!
Got it to work! Only checked the options where scsi controlled hard drives and voila. Kinda sux that the config-makers dont warn about these problems, that ide and scsi conflicts when both checked.

Some minor problems with lilo and fstab arose swithing from /dev/hdc3 to /dev/sda3 but reinstalling lilo and editing fstab did the trick.


now xwindows wont start but this is another problem :)

anyway thnx robert for your help.

/zvn