d-i loads ide_generic but doesn't enable it in installed system
On Wed, Apr 13, 2011 at 10:18:24PM +0200, Holger Wansing wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I returned back to this to try, if something has happened on this
> in the last time (I thought, maybe a new kernel release has fixed this
> or something like that ...)
>
> The problem is this:
>
> I have an old laptop here, where the ide disk was supported in the
> past over the old ide_xxx drivers.
> While these drivers seem to be no longer supported on the long
> run, I tried if I can get ide running with the new libata drivers.
>
> And the answer is No.
> Further investigation gave the info, that this particular ide controller
> was supported by the ide_gd kernel module.
ide_gd is the IDE generic disk module, which is shared between
ide_disk and ide_floppy drivers. It depends on a separate driver for
the controller.
In the new world of libata, sd replaces ide_gd, ide_disk and
ide_floppy.
> Don't know what driver obsoleted the ide_gd module, I tried all of the
> ata_xxx modules available on a recent debian-installer netinst cd,
> and none was able to bring the ide controller up (so no ide disk
> visible).
>
> So this ide controller is no longer supported by the linux kernel.
> (you can find this in the history of this report several times)
>
> If you ask now: ok, what controller does your machine have?
> I will have to answer: well, I don't know exactly, the output of
> lspci is this:
>
> ~ # lspci
> 00:00.0 Host bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems CPU to PCI bridge (rev a0)
> 00:04.0 VGA compatible controller: Chips and Technologies F65555 HiQVPro (rev c6)
> 00:0b.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 02)
> 00:11.0 Communication controller: Toshiba America Info Systems FIR Port Type-0 (rev 21)
> 00:13.0 Cardbus bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems ToPIC97 (rev 20)
> 00:13.1 Cardbus bridge: Toshiba America Info Systems ToPIC97 (rev 20)
>
> So, there is no ide controller listed.
So it's not a PCI device.
> And ide disc is accessible at this time via ide_generic:
> ~ # ls /dev/hda*
> /dev/hda /dev/hda1 /dev/hda2
ide_generic is still available because it doesn't have a direct
replacement. However there is no way for the kernel to detect the
controller and trigger automatic loading of the driver, as it would
for a PCI device. The initramfs configuration must explicitly list
it to be included and directly loaded during boot.
I thought that if the installer loaded it then it would also ensure
that it was loaded when booting the installed system. So this may be
a debian-installer bug or an initramfs-tools bug.
Ben.
> This system outputs were created on 2.6.37-2-486 from a daily build netinst cd
> from 20110407.
> The machine is an Toshiba Satellite 320CDS laptop.
>
>
> Don't know what to do with this bug (it has a long history already,
> starting with Squeeze-alpha1 ...):
> Close it and file a new one against the kernel?
--
Ben Hutchings
We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking.
- Albert Camus
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