Arch Linux

iBertus

Member

From: Greenville, NC

Registered: 2004-11-04

Posts: 2,228

Anyone using sata_promise w/ SATA drives, please help.

A recently submitted a kernel patch to ensure that PATA ports are detected on Promise FastTrak controllers with both PATA and SATA ports. I have no way of testing SATA drives with this patch. Could someone using one of these controllers with SATA drives please patch a kernel and see if everything is still good?

Bug Report #4770

Bjørn

Member

From: The Netherlands

Registered: 2004-03-18

Posts: 139

Website

Re: Anyone using sata_promise w/ SATA drives, please help.

I'm using sata_promise with a SATA HD. Unfortunately, since Linux 2.6.17 it doesn't want to boot anymore (kernel oops on startup). For now I am using  2.6.15-archck which I still had lying around fortunately, though 2.6.16 also worked for me.

Do you by any chance know about this problem? According to linux changes, this has happened to the promise driver:

* Add support for the Promise Fasttrak TX4300/TX4310 4-port PCI SATA controllers based on the PDC40719 chip to sata_promise driver (commit)

But that was actually a very minor patch, I guess some other promise/sata related change broke it.

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A Free Real-time Massively Multiplayer Online RPG in development.

iBertus

Member

From: Greenville, NC

Registered: 2004-11-04

Posts: 2,228

Re: Anyone using sata_promise w/ SATA drives, please help.

I'm having the same trouble now. I'm going to investigate the issue further and see if I can fix it. I DID work with the 2.6.17 kernels from testing, but this was not the final 2.6.17 release from kernel.org and changes could have been made.

iBertus

Member

From: Greenville, NC

Registered: 2004-11-04

Posts: 2,228

Re: Anyone using sata_promise w/ SATA drives, please help.

It seems this is a known issue with PATA support within the sata_promise driver as well as the sata_sli driver. You should try to recompile the kernel without the pata_fix.diff or whatever it's call, and see if that helps. If you need to use the PATA ports on your Promise controller you should do what you are currently doing and use an older kernel. No word on when this will be sorted out.

Bjørn

Member

From: The Netherlands

Registered: 2004-03-18

Posts: 139

Website

Re: Anyone using sata_promise w/ SATA drives, please help.

Well I recompiled the kernel without the pata-fix.patch, and the oops is now gone. I propose as long as the pata-fix.patch is actually breaking the kernel it should not be included in the main package. Note that the problem was rather severe, as the kernel wouldn't boot anymore.

Note that I am not using the IDE ports on my promise extension card. There's already two IDE ports on my motherboard, so I also consider this a rather rare scenario.

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http://themanaworld.org/
A Free Real-time Massively Multiplayer Online RPG in development.