Work around for SATA driver bug in Sarge 3.1r2 (how)?
I have been spending everyday for the past couple of weeks trying to
get a Debian based install on my G5 single (PowerMac 9.1). I have
settled on Debian Sarge 3.1r2 as being the least problematic install
to rectify as all Debian based distros have serious installation
issues, at this time that are insurmountable for the average newbie
with a G5 single. Hopefully I can get Debian Sarge 3.1r2 installed,
with some help from the list. Here is the errata for the install:
"SATA driver can block access to CD drive in installations from CD.
On systems having a SATA IDE controller that also has the CD drive
connected to it, you may see the installer hanging during hardware
detection for the CD drive or failing to read the CD just afterwards.
A possible reason is that the SATA driver (ata_piix and maybe others)
is blocking access to the CD drive.
You can try to work around this by booting the installer in expert
mode and, in the "Detect and mount CD-ROM" step, selecting only the
drivers needed for CD support. These are (ide-)generic, ide-cd and
isofs.
The drivers needed to access the disk will still be loaded, but at a
later stage. By loading the CD drivers before the SATA driver in this
way, you may be able to complete the installation. Note that CD-ROM
access may still be an issue after rebooting into the installed system."
I have tried using the above method, but actually can't see how this
should work as there doesn't seem to be a way of loading the CD
drivers before the SATA driver. A loop develops with the selection of
the CD drivers, because the SATA drivers have already loaded and the
CD-ROM still cannot be detected, despite only choosing the above
quoted CD drivers. Can someone walk me through this, please?
For those of you that don't understand why I don't just install Etch
beta 2, I can say that I have tried that. There is an issue with Etch
not being able to detect USB keyboards (and maybe mice as well)
during the install. This isn't in the errata and I would consider it
a bug. However, as I don't want to run a 'testing" system anyway, it
is just another reason to get a Sarge install to work.
Cheers,
Brian
Reply to: