Trouble installing on HP ML110 with Promise pdc20621

[Justin Guerin <jguerin@cso.atmel.com>]

Hello,

I'm not able to get Debian installed using RC3 on an HP ML110 with a Promise 
pdc20621 controller.  Installation freezes when inserting the sd_mod 
module.  I'm aware of bug #226599, and the work around detailed in that bug 
states to manually load the sd_mod module before the sata_sx4 module is 
loaded.  I've done that, but the system still freezes, or, if I've inserted 
all the modules that sata_sx4 depends on manually, the modprobe enters 
uninterruptible sleep, and never comes out.

I've tried this with the drives configured (via the controller) as RAID 1 
and with the drives not configured at all, and neither makes any 
difference.

I also tried the 2005-04-20 installer snapshot.  The first time I booted, it 
seemed to load the modules OK, but the drives appeared as individual disks, 
not as the one volume that the RAID1 setup should have presented.  It's as 
if the RAID controller was configured to present JBOD, but I double 
checked, and that's not the case.

Of course, to double check, I had to reboot (aborting the installation).  
Ever since then, I haven't been able to get past the module load stage 
without the system either freezing or the module insertion going into 
uninterruptible sleep.

So that leaves me with 2 questions: first, is the sata_sx4 driver supposed 
to support hardware raid, or will it always directly access the drives, as 
if they were configured as JBOD?  Second, is there something I'm doing 
wrong that leads to the freezes?

Thanks,
Justin Guerin