Arch Linux

desertViking

Member

From: Arizona

Registered: 2005-10-30

Posts: 170

Why is IDE required in mkinitcpio.conf

Hi,

I upgraded a system today that had not been touched in awhile.  The system boot would stall out, making a reference to "If you arrive here, add a delay...."  and popped a busybox sort of prompt.  Not a big deal, I sort of expected it because of the number of updates to the system.

Nosing around, I decided to modify mkinitcpio.conf

MODULES="piix ide_disk reiserfs"

My boot volume is EXT2, so I suppose I should remove the reiserfs reference at some point.  This mod seemed more relevant to kernel panics, but tried it anyway.  It worked.

Unfortunately, I don't really know why.  I have a relatively modern motherboard, less than a year old, and would have thought PATA would have been fine.

So this question isn't so much a problem to solve as an education for me on why I needed to do what I did, so that I can recognize the scenario in the future.

Can anyone shed some light?

Thx in advance!

Last edited by desertViking (2007-06-14 19:26:00)

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"In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is."

rayjgu3

Member

From: Chicago IL usa

Registered: 2004-07-04

Posts: 695

Re: Why is IDE required in mkinitcpio.conf

well believe the answer to the question is i think
cause the arch's stock kernel has gone modular from ide/sata/scsi controler to acpi/battery <laptops< &
the filesystem ie ext2 ext3 rieserfs (this happened months ago )
much like xorg done like over a year ago
dont know how long since your last update but reiserfs was probably in there by default & you never changed it , you probably still have mkinitrd.conf on your system which is no longer used

if it hasnt happened to you yet , you keep playing with mkinitcpio.conf your root "/" will be sd*# instead of hd*# for furthur explanation search wiki

desertViking

Member

From: Arizona

Registered: 2005-10-30

Posts: 170

Re: Why is IDE required in mkinitcpio.conf

Before I changed my mkinitcpio.conf file, the MODULES settings were "pata...".  These must be defaults, but seemed not to work in my case, so I changed as indicated.  I looked at the settings on a different PC that I had installed only recently, and the MODULES="" were different, but also not the defaults, so I assume that if I'd installed from duke to my broken system, it probably would have chosen sensible settings.

The system was changed over to the sda... format.

Still curious about why pata doesn't work, but I am booting and Arch'ing away at the moment so it remains just a curiosity.

Thx for your reply!

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"In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is."