Recompiling the stupid Kernel with SATA

MRK · 10-04-2004, 03:28 PM

Ok, i posted my original problem in the 2.6.8.0 thread, but no one has posted there.

I think i've narrowed down my problem. First off, i'll restate what i did in the first place. I installed Slack 10 with everything (all 3 gigs of it). I then downloaded and recompiled the 2.6.8.1 kernel. Everything worked great. I then realized that i had unintentioally installed everything. ugh. So i formated and redid the system with only the software i wanted. After i downloaded and recompiled the kernel exactly the same way. I rebooted and it did not work. I get some random errors.

After redoing the system 3 times and and recompling the kernel about 200 times, i've come to the conclusion that either my hardware is messed up or there is a bug in the kernel.

First of all, for last 20 recompiles, i get an error that tells me to specifiy a "good" root = in the lilo conf.

This leads me to believe that it is an sata problem The only thing i can think of is that the system is not asigning the drives the correct drive "letters" or whatever linux calls them. My / partition is on /dev/sda3.

In my kernel config i have only specified it to compile the reiserfs. (not ext3 or anything) I have also told it only to use the intel sata drivers. (pch5 or whatever its called.)

Is there anything else i need to specify.

Thanks

-Matt Keller

kilgoretrout · 10-04-2004, 10:40 PM

Reboot and when you see the lilo selection screen, hit the Esc key which will take you to a boot prompt. At the prompt type:

linux root=/dev/sda3

and hit the Enter key. If it boots, post back and I'll go into more detail on how to permanantly fix the problem.

XStorm · 10-05-2004, 05:25 AM

I have a similar problem with a S-ATA drive (an 160GB 7200.7 Seagate drive mounted on an ABIT IC7 mobo), but mine won't even install slack. I've tried to boot adaptec.s, scsi.s, scsi2.s, scsi3.s and nothing... the S-ATA controller (ICH-5) is set on Enhanced mode, which means the drive is on an IDE channel (IDE3). Any suggestions ?

LATER EDIT :
Just downloaded sata.i from slackware-current, going to put it in the /bootdisk folder on my slackware 10.0 cd and try to boot it, maybe this will work...

bramadams · 10-05-2004, 01:47 PM

Hi,

I've got the same problem with the 2.4.26-kernel. I tried the sata.i, but the SATA disk still won't be detected and furthermore I get a kernel panic when I seem not being able to insert the root disk (the CD I guess).

The last problem could be solved by including the sata.i on the Slackware disc, but what about the first issue? Are there special drivers/modules needed?

Some specs: the disk is a WDC WD1200JD-00GBB0 (120 GB) on an Intel 915GAV-motherboard. Output from dmesg:

dmesg output (notice that the disk is not mentioned near the kmod-errors):

Code:

Linux version 2.4.26 (root@tree) (gcc version 3.3.4) #6 Mon Jun 14 19:07:27 PDT 2004
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
 BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009fc00 (usable)
 BIOS-e820: 000000000009fc00 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000000e6000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 000000003f72fc00 (usable)
 BIOS-e820: 000000003f72fc00 - 000000003f730000 (ACPI NVS)
 BIOS-e820: 000000003f730000 - 000000003f740000 (ACPI data)
 BIOS-e820: 000000003f740000 - 000000003f7f0000 (ACPI NVS)
 BIOS-e820: 000000003f7f0000 - 000000003f800000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000e0000000 - 00000000f0000000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000fed13000 - 00000000fed1a000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000fed1c000 - 00000000feda0000 (reserved)
Warning only 896MB will be used.
Use a HIGHMEM enabled kernel.
896MB LOWMEM available.
On node 0 totalpages: 229376
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 225280 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/kernels/bare.i/bzImage initrd=initrd.img load_ramdisk=1 prompt_ramdisk=0 ramdisk_size=6464 rw root=/dev/ram SLACK_KERNEL=bare.i
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 3400.249 MHz processor.
Console: colour VGA+ 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 6789.52 BogoMIPS
Memory: 901752k/917504k available (1844k kernel code, 15364k reserved, 618k data, 120k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 8, 1048576 bytes)
Inode cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
Mount cache hash table entries: 512 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 6, 262144 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 262144 (order: 8, 1048576 bytes)
CPU: Trace cache: 12K uops<6>CPU: L2 cache: 1024K
CPU:     After generic, caps: bfebfbff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU:             Common caps: bfebfbff 00000000 00000000 00000000
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.40GHz stepping 04
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: Probing PCI hardware (bus 00)
PCI: Ignoring BAR0-3 of IDE controller 00:1f.1
Transparent bridge - Intel Corp. 82801BA/CA/DB/EB PCI Bridge
PCI: Using IRQ router PIIX/ICH [8086/2640] at 00:1f.0
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:01.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:02.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:1b.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:1c.1
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:1d.3
PCI: Found IRQ 5 for device 00:1c.2
PCI: Sharing IRQ 5 with 00:1d.2
PCI: Sharing IRQ 5 with 00:1f.1
PCI: Found IRQ 10 for device 00:1c.3
PCI: Sharing IRQ 10 with 00:1d.1
PCI: Sharing IRQ 10 with 00:1f.2
PCI: Sharing IRQ 10 with 00:1f.3
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
Starting kswapd
VFS: Disk quotas vdquot_6.5.1
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
pty: 512 Unix98 ptys configured
Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with HUB-6 MANY_PORTS MULTIPORT SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI enabled
ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
Real Time Clock Driver v1.10f
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 6464K size 1024 blocksize
loop: loaded (max 8 devices)
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta4-2.4
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
ICH6: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:1f.1
PCI: Found IRQ 5 for device 00:1f.1
PCI: Sharing IRQ 5 with 00:1c.2
PCI: Sharing IRQ 5 with 00:1d.2
ICH6: chipset revision 3
ICH6: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
    ide0: BM-DMA at 0xffa0-0xffa7, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:pio
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0xffa8-0xffaf, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:pio
hda: LITE-ON DVDRW LDW-851S, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
hda: attached ide-cdrom driver.
hda: ATAPI 40X DVD-ROM DVD-R CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, UDMA(33)
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno = 2
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno = 2
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k scsi_hostadapter, errno = 2
md: linear personality registered as nr 1
md: raid0 personality registered as nr 2
md: raid1 personality registered as nr 3
md: raid5 personality registered as nr 4
raid5: measuring checksumming speed
   8regs     :  3736.000 MB/sec
   32regs    :  2497.200 MB/sec
   pIII_sse  :  5866.000 MB/sec
   pII_mmx   :  3700.000 MB/sec
   p5_mmx    :  3700.000 MB/sec
raid5: using function: pIII_sse (5866.000 MB/sec)
md: md driver 0.90.0 MAX_MD_DEVS=256, MD_SB_DISKS=27
md: Autodetecting RAID arrays.
md: autorun ...
md: ... autorun DONE.
LVM version 1.0.8(17/11/2003)
Initializing Cryptographic API
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
IP: routing cache hash table of 8192 buckets, 64Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 262144 bind 65536)
Linux IP multicast router 0.06 plus PIM-SM
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
RAMDISK: Compressed image found at block 0
Freeing initrd memory: 2607k freed
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem).
Freeing unused kernel memory: 120k freed
usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs
usb.c: registered new driver hub
PCI: Found IRQ 9 for device 00:1d.7
PCI: Sharing IRQ 9 with 00:1d.0
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 00:1d.7 to 64
ehci_hcd 00:1d.7: PCI device 8086:265c (Intel Corp.)
ehci_hcd 00:1d.7: irq 9, pci mem f8825c00
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
ehci_hcd 00:1d.7: enabled 64bit PCI DMA
PCI: cache line size of 128 is not supported by device 00:1d.7
ehci_hcd 00:1d.7: USB 2.0 enabled, EHCI 1.00, driver 2003-Dec-29/2.4
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 8 ports detected
uhci.c: USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v1.1
PCI: Found IRQ 9 for device 00:1d.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 9 with 00:1d.7
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 00:1d.0 to 64
uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0xc800, IRQ 9
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 2
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 2 ports detected
PCI: Found IRQ 10 for device 00:1d.1
PCI: Sharing IRQ 10 with 00:1c.3
PCI: Sharing IRQ 10 with 00:1f.2
PCI: Sharing IRQ 10 with 00:1f.3
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 00:1d.1 to 64
uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0xcc00, IRQ 10
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 3
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 2 ports detected
PCI: Found IRQ 5 for device 00:1d.2
PCI: Sharing IRQ 5 with 00:1c.2
PCI: Sharing IRQ 5 with 00:1f.1
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 00:1d.2 to 64
uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0xd000, IRQ 5
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 4
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 2 ports detected
PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 00:1d.3
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:01.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:02.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:1b.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 00:1c.1
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 00:1d.3 to 64
uhci.c: USB UHCI at I/O 0xd400, IRQ 11
usb.c: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 5
hub.c: USB hub found
hub.c: 2 ports detected
usb.c: registered new driver usbkbd
usbkbd.c: :USB HID Boot Protocol keyboard driver
usb.c: registered new driver hiddev
usb.c: registered new driver hid
hid-core.c: v1.8.1 Andreas Gal, Vojtech Pavlik <vojtech@suse.cz>
hid-core.c: USB HID support drivers
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
Initializing USB Mass Storage driver...
usb.c: registered new driver usb-storage
USB Mass Storage support registered.

As this is my office PC, I temporarily have to cope with Windows XP ;-(. So, all help appreciated.

LNXman · 10-06-2004, 10:42 AM

Quote:

ICH6: chipset revision 3
ICH6: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xffa0-0xffa7, BIOS settings: hda

MA, hdb

io
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xffa8-0xffaf, BIOS settings: hdc

io, hdd

io
hda: LITE-ON DVDRW LDW-851S, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
hda: attached ide-cdrom driver.
hda: ATAPI 40X DVD-ROM DVD-R CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, UDMA(33)

The above snippet of your kernel load shows the kernel not finding any hard drives, but only one cdrom as a primary master.

Curiosity Question(s):
Why is your cdrom your primary master?

FYI:

(1)
-If you have a hard drive (or hard drives) installed in your system, and the kernel does not see them, then you may have your computer bios set up in SATA RAID mode, which, unfortunately, kernels (2.4.22< and 2.6.0< don't recognize the raid unless you apply patches to the kernel.

From kernel 2.4.22-2.4.27 && 2.6.0-2.6.8.1 you would have to apply a libata patch + a iswraid patch to your kernel in order to recognize the raid.

For upcoming kernels 2.4.28 && 2.6.9 I believe you would only have to apply the iswraid patch since the libata code has been merged onto the kernel source. I have not tested this 100%, so take this with a grain of salt.

Regardless, you may want to check out
this site, and do google searches w.r.t. the information you find on the first site.

I have gotten it to work ( recreating a slackware install cd), and everything installed fine. However, I have come across issues with the raid where the raid becomes degraded right after the initial disk boot. I recently gave up (because of deadline issues) trying to get that software raid to work, and have 3ware raid cards on the way instead.

(2)
-If you have a hard drive (or hard drives) installed in your system && the kernel does not see them && you don't care to use the software raid. Then, switch your bios back to IDE mode, and the sata.i kernel should be able to detect the drives as /dev/hd<whatever>.

Hope this info helps.

GL

MRK · 10-06-2004, 01:47 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by kilgoretrout
Reboot and when you see the lilo selection screen, hit the Esc key which will take you to a boot prompt. At the prompt type:

linux root=/dev/sda3

and hit the Enter key. If it boots, post back and I'll go into more detail on how to permanantly fix the problem.

Thanks for the advice. I'm assuming that linux is the label of the new kernel i'm using. I have two kernels listed.
Linux - default 2.4.26
Linux-26 - Old kernel that doesent work
Linux-262 - The kernel i've been trying to get to work for the last week.

I typed at the boot prompt:
linux-262 root=/dev/sda3

when i type that i get the following:

Quote:

VFS: Cannot open root device "sda3"or unknown-block(0,0)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

But as we can see, i did specify a root= option. lol. Is it possible that the new kernel isnt mounting my drives properly? Or mabey its assinging them to differnt devices suchs as /dev/ide3 or /dev/scsi3 or something.
Ugh. I love linux, but when it doesnt work, its a pain in the

.

-Matt

MRK · 10-06-2004, 01:50 PM

By the way, the default 2.4.26 kernel works like a charm. No problems at all. I just want to have the latest and greatest kernel compiled with only what i need so i dont waist resources.

Thanks for the help!!

-Matt

MRK · 10-06-2004, 03:31 PM

AHHHHHHHHHHHH!! I hate this piece of crap. lol.

I just reformated and reinstalled again.

:'( and it doesnt work!

I get the very same error as above.

Quote:

VFS: Cannot open root device "sda3"or unknown-block(0,0)
Please append a correct "root=" boot option
Kernel panic VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

:'(

-Matt

MRK · 10-06-2004, 04:03 PM

It seems lately that the system keeps freezing randomly. I think this may be a hardware problem. Any ideas as to what it may be?

-Matt

XStorm · 10-07-2004, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by MRK
AHHHHHHHHHHHH!! I hate this piece of crap. lol.

I just reformated and reinstalled again. :'( and it doesnt work!

I get the very same error as above.

:'(

-Matt

I've just managed to install slack 10.0 from bonecrusher's sata install CD, and tried to compile a 2.6.8.1 kernel and get the exact same error. I enabled everything in the kernel related to SATA in the SCSI->SCSI low level drivers sections....got no clue.

bramadams · 10-07-2004, 02:51 PM

Hi LNXman,

Quote:

Originally posted by LNXman
Curiosity Question(s):
Why is your cdrom your primary master?

That's how I got the machine. I'll leave it like that because I've struggled too long with the installation of Slackware 10.0.

Quote:

If you have a hard drive (or hard drives) installed in your system, and the kernel does not see them, then you may have your computer bios set up in SATA RAID mode, which, unfortunately, kernels (2.4.22< and 2.6.0< don't recognize the raid unless you apply patches to the kernel.

From kernel 2.4.22-2.4.27 && 2.6.0-2.6.8.1 you would have to apply a libata patch + a iswraid patch to your kernel in order to recognize the raid.

For upcoming kernels 2.4.28 && 2.6.9 I believe you would only have to apply the iswraid patch since the libata code has been merged onto the kernel source. I have not tested this 100%, so take this with a grain of salt.

I compiled the 2.6.8.1-kernel based on the sata.i-config, stripped it down to fit on a floppy and used the makedisk-script to create an install bootdisk: it worked! For my RCH6-controller, all I needed was the ata_piix-module built-in alongside libata. I removed all raid-support and it still worked.

So, anyone with a D915GAV-motherboard and a SATA-disk: use the previous paragraph and everything will be fine.

Thanks for the help and the pointers to kernel.org and libata!

LNXman · 10-08-2004, 02:13 AM

Glad to hear you solved your problem.

After re-reading my post I guess I forgot about telling you about the ata_piix module. My bad! Maybe that would have helped speed up things.

In any case, you figured it out and that is what counts.

Good job.

L8

MRK · 10-08-2004, 12:03 PM

I'll have to try that. For now i'm testing a theory. I disabled enhanced mode and put my motherboard into legacy mode. The slack cd boots just fine. It now sees the hard drive as hda instead of sda. My question is, if this fixes the problem, does legacy mode slow the drive down? Or is it exactly the same? Thanks for the help!!!

-Matt

MRK · 10-08-2004, 12:28 PM

Ok, putting the drive in legacy mode didnt help a thing. I also formated the drive in ext3. That didnt nothing either. So.........

Where is the ata_piix module? What section is it under? Device Drivers --> what? --> what?

I have the Device Drivers --> SCSI device support --> SCSI low-level drivers --> Serail ATA (SATA) support --> Intel PIIX/ICS SATA support
built in. Is that the same thing? Thanks!

-Matt

MRK · 10-08-2004, 03:14 PM

I finally got the stupid kernel to compile, but it has everything possible built into it. I took the config file from the cdrom under the bare.i folder and put it in the 2.6.8.1 folder and compiled the new kernel. It built about 500 modules and took a ton of time, but the kernel boots. This tells me that in the kernels i've been building, i've been leaving something out. ugh. I really dont want to go through each item and compile it and see if it works or not, but i dont know what else to do. Does anyone have a list of the bare essentials for an Intel D865GBF Motherboard, P4 3.2ghz w/ 512 MB of ddr ram, SATA150 WD 120 GB hard drive i legacy mode. Thanks for your help!

-Matt