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#1 2004-08-14 21:49:28
- paranoos
- Member
- From: thornhill.on.ca
- Registered: 2004-07-22
- Posts: 442
Why maintain separate kernels for ide / scsi?
I don't really understand why arch has separate kernels for ide and scsi. I was just reading some forum posts about difficulties in installing arch, and they are all related to SATA. Apparently, you need to boot the CD with the non-default scsi kernel in order to get sata drives recognized for installation.
Also, people are expecting to be using their USB storage devices, which all require SCSI, but apparently this isn't well known, judging by the number of posts asking for help on this matter.
I hope we can discuss this issue here, and hopefully make changes for the Wombat install CD.
The SCSI kernel is only a ~600kb larger download than the default IDE, so I don't think the reason for separating them is based on size. Is the kernel bootup time difference really noticable on an i686 system? (ie, people running arch don't have such old computers where it would be a big deal)
If there are legitimate reasons for keeping an ide-only kernel, then I suggest we at least make SCSI the default, and provide kernel26-noscsi as an option for those who need it. But I would personally prefer to get rid of the ide-only kernel alltogether.
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#2 2004-08-15 09:17:36
- IceRAM
- Member
- From: Bucharest, Romania
- Registered: 2004-03-04
- Posts: 772
- Website
Re: Why maintain separate kernels for ide / scsi?
Also, people are expecting to be using their USB storage devices, which all require SCSI, but apparently this isn't well known, judging by the number of posts asking for help on this matter.
USB storage devices work very well with the IDE kernel just by loading a few kernel modules (2 as far as I remember) or use hotplug. It worked out of the box for me. Read the Wiki for this.
About the SATA installation problem, maybe a Wiki page (or some lines in the online installation guide) about this would be useful. I plan buying a SATA HDD (with a new PC) soon and I am still thinking wether Arch will install on it without no problem.
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