Hi,
I have an asus a7n8x deluxe mobo with the silicon image sil3112a controller onboard. I have suse 9.1 personal installed on my system. When trying to install either fedora core 3 test 3 or suse pro 9.2, the installer either freezes or hangs when trying to load sata_sil. It seems to me to be a kernel issue, as kernel 2.6.4 (in suse 9.1) works fine, but 2.6.8 does not. Is it possible in some way to add a patch or use a driver disk on install to get this to work? In that case, how do I do it (note, I have not found a driver disk for these distributions, only for suse up to 8.2).
I have also found the source for a driver from the silicon image website, and the files are called:
siimage.c
siimage.h
Can I use this in some way?
I know that the kernel is supposed to support this controller, but it doesn't seem to work very well.
All input on this is greatly appreciated,

thanks
Martin

I'm having the same problem with the sil3112a. I've tried every distro I can find to see if anything will work. It is working for someone out there but they haven't posted any info that I can find that has worked for me. Suse 9.2 sees the controller but shows an error that it can't use it without some sort of post install setup. I want to install to these drives so it's not much of a help. Then I found Mandrake 10.1 sees the raid 0 config and tries to install the drivers but after several minutes of hang it simply says that it can't be done and moves on.

I'm not certain I want to shell out the 130+ bucks to investigate 10.1 Official yet. Please post back if you find some kind of help. It's appreciated.

Here is what I have found out so far. As kernel 2.6.4 (suse 9.1) is working fine, and 2.6.8 is not I have tried to find out why. There seems to be an issue with sil3112A and certain seagate hard disks. In sata_sil for kernel 2.6.9 one of the hard disks I have attached to the sata controller is blacklisted, and that is a seagate barracuda 7200.7 120Gb (ST3120026AS). People have reported that kernel 2.6.9 is working fine with this setup, but with reduced transfer rates. The same people have had problems with 2.6.8. I guess I will buy myself a new PATA hard disk and try installing it to that as I had quite a few problems with the seagate drive (not including this!!).

Hmmm, guess that changing hard disk will not work. I tried unplugging the seagate disk, but still got the same errors. Annoying.

I disabled the onboard sil3112a controller by jumper setting. Install went fine from then. No hangs or freezes whatsoever. I think that I am gonna buy myself a promise controller like the tx2 that is fully supported by suse.

Martin

That's probably going to be the best option. Which chipset is supported? I'll probably do the same thing.

Don't know if it is the best option yet, but I have ordered a TX2 controller and we'll see from there.
You can check out http://linux.yyz.us/sata/sata-status.html for information about SATA status in linux.
You can check in the hardware database over at SUSE as well: http://hardwaredb.suse.de/?LANG=en_UK and search for promise for instance. It's said there that the FastTrak100 with TX2 chipset is fully supported. Don't know if it applies to the non-raid controller as well. Also, check out Promise Technologies and other manufacturers own pages for information about their controllers. I landed on a TX2 as it is said to have production stable drivers on the sata on linux pages, but I guess that other controllers will do the work as well.
I will give feedback to this when I recieve the controller.

about my 101st search on google on this matter I ran across something interesting.

http://www.linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html

the sil3112a is referenced on there. it is mentioned that the driver on there isn't needed in 2.6 which i am hearing frequently but let me be the first to say seeing sda & sdb is worthless if you want to install ina raid 0. i've seen references to dm raid which this guy & the mandrake install.txt mentions dmraid (http://www.hailfinger.org/carldani/l...es/raiddetect/). so how does one incorporate this guys article into a kernel? i guess i need to read up on patching kernels, and then migrating from a pata drive to my sata.

what a pain in the ass. wouldn't it make sense to make a driver for 2.6 that detects a raid 0 instead of threatening to destroy my pre-existing partitions and ignore the the current situation? feels like there is something that i am missing.... and its painfully obvious that i should have gone with an ide raid back when i upgraded. stinking sata bloze all the way around.

Tell me about it, but the conclusions concerning me is that the sata_sil driver in kernel 2.6.8 has some issues. What is said on that page is that for kernel 2.4.* one can use the proprietary drivers from silicon image. From kernel 2.6.* support for sata is incorporated in the kernel (I think). The problem is that sata_sil doesn't work for me. I will not be using raid, so that is why I chose to buy a *clean* sata controller w/o raid. But, as mentioned earlier, Fasttrak100 with TX2 chipset is fully supported by suse, and is also a raid controller. So if everything else fails that might be a way to go.
I will recieve the new controller tomorrow, so I can report if this is working sometime during the weekend.

Just wanted to tell those interested that the installation of suse9.2 ran as smooth as it ever could have. I disabled the sil3112a onboard satacontroller by jumper setting, and plugged in a promise tx2plus card instead.

On http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/in...showtopic=7681 another solution is given. As stated there one can give APIC as kernel option, and install is working!! Don't know if it works for owners of a7n8x deluxe though.

That's really odd. I haven't had the same problems with Suse 9.2 not recognizing the controller. Almost every other distro hasn't recognized it yet but Suse was the only one that did. It also had a window pop up at gui start saying that the sil3112 was really a software raid etc and to check the suse portal for a way to support it after install. Of course I can't find that 'help' in portal but I just have to figure out the 'secret' words to search for to find the answer.

That said, thanks for the forum link. There was some excellent information provided and your follow up is appreciated. I'll do the same as I find - if I find - any new info.