Re: Generic IDE support in Debian kernel-image packages

[jacob@green.cachevalley.com (Jacob L. Anawalt)]

I thought an easy way to set a value to ide_generic_all would be to add
module_param(ide_generic_all, int, 0) to the end of ide/pci/generic.c as
ata/ata_generic.c does.

Looking around for some documentation on module_param (I can only keep
so many levels of macro expansion in my head) I found a changelog entry
for the ubuntu 2.6.17.1-10.34 linux kernel that claimed to be doing the
same thing. In that version they use module_param_named.

Either way, the changelog entry makes sense to me:

  * ide/pci/generic: Add all_generic_ide module option. This is a no-op
    patch. Only affects people who know to use this option. Option existed
    already, but didn't work because we compiled this as a module instead
    of into the kernel.

This code seems to drive the whole marvell backend as pata/ide. I am
able to read from the CD-ROM drive.

In the long term switching from ide to ata, where there is a generic
module option and possibly better support and handling, would be best.
In the shorter term if Etch will not have 2.6.20 I think that having an
install time option of the kernel supporting new hardware in generic
mode would be quite useful.

-- 
Jacob