You could fill a bug with the kernel developers.
If you just want to use the machinery, and you have other Arch installations that work without the crappy sata drivers, you could just boot the old P3's over diskless nfs root.
I wondered about doing this, actually. I just got back from lunch and upon stuffing my face with nachos, it occurred to me I might want to reel it in a bit and see if there's a solution other than fixing the driver manually. Would I just go to kernel.org to report a bug or is there something arch-specific I should do?
I see what you mean about the diskless booting, but that doesn't fit with my long-term project, which requires local booting.
Any options in the BIOS for configuring the SATA controller?
Not many, actually. It's an adaptec 1210sa which is essentially a long-life software raid card, or jbod card. My application doesn't really need raid, so I'm just using it for jbod purposes. Other linux distros have been playing with it nicely, all with older kernels..I'm fairly certain.
]]>My problem now is I've never fixed a linux driver in my life and I don't even know where to start.
It is not for the feint of heart. But this is where you should begin this journey
I've no association with that site aside from my indebtedness for the excellent resource.
]]>well....my situation seems localized to the sata_sil driver, which I know works in the 2.6.x kernel
can I:
fix it (scary question, how?)
or
roll back my kernel to 2.6? (also how?)
Thanks!
Edit:
I had no idea how many responses this had received! Thanks, folks. Other live CDs work fine (such as SliTaz, running kernel 2.6.32) Arch much be running the newest kernel of all the distros I've got floating around...it seems like some other people using silicon image sata adapters after 2.6.32 have similar issues...
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