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Re: Re: sarge installation with kernel 2.6.8

Since I have been having similar problems, I would appreciate it if you could mention which modules you used to configure the kernel for SATA. Despite many tries with various combinations of drivers, I have yet to succeed in getting full SATA support for a relatively new Dell 8400 dimension and have been going with PATA. 

Thanks
Peter
Here is what I did (My PC is a dell dimenstion 8400 with a single SATA drive):
1) In the bios, in drives -> SATA operation, change the disk controller mode to 
    RAID/ATA. Don't use SATA/PATA combine mode, which leads to the failure
    of cdrom detection in booting linux26.
2) Boot from the lastest sarge netinstall cd, type 'linux26' at the boot prompt. 3) Finish a fresh installation in the usual way (your first hard drive should show 
   up as /dev/sda instead of /dev/hda when partition is done)

Then, you are done! I don't remember I re-compiled the kernel.
'linux26' leads to kernel 2.6.8-1, if I remember correctly. I only have 2.6.8-2 
now, so can't show 2.6.8-1 config file to you.
I believe ata_piix and libata are the modules that do the job. They recognize 
my SATA drive correctly (not as PATA as kernel 2.4 does). According to the
results of hdparm, sequential read performance is on par with that under
winXP. So, I am happy with it. The only thing that bothers me is that my winXP was installed in RAID/AHCI mode, so I have to do the switch in the bios every time I need to boot winxp (less than once a week, fortunately). A reinstallation 
of winxp in RAID/ATA mode probably will solve the problem.

According to the change log of kernel 2.6.10, they have added AHCI support.
AHCI is supposed to be faster and more efficient. But, again, upgrading from
using ata_piix to ahci might not be easy (if possible), since you have to
do the  kernel upgrading in RAID/ATA mode, and new kernel is expected to
recognize things already installed in RAID/AHCI mode. I personally don't expect that to work. Well, you can try to do a fresh installation with kernel 2.6.10, but it will be a while before we can get an official netinstall cd with 2.6.10. I tried to use debian-cd to build my own, but no luck. It might be just a matter of spending more 
time learning how to use debian-cd, but I am kinda deterred, :-P

I hope this will help.

Lei
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