Re: suggestion on initial IDE-boot configuration
On Tue, 2004-09-21 at 07:23, Jurzitza, Dieter wrote:
> Dear listmembers,
> my experiences with my U60 lead me to the following suggestion:
>
> -> put a default "ide=nodma" as kernel parameter on SPARC
> -> make the user / the configuration enable dma via /etc/init.d/XXX
>
> why?
> U60 cannot cope with udma-modes (AFAIK, on those Promise controllers I have tested) > 2. If you i.e. use an external controller that enables max-dma-speed by default, the installation will always fail - assuming you want to install on an ide-hdd.
> If this would be an installation option (maybe with a test-structure ...) IMHO ide-installation could run smoothly.
> Somebody who does not know about the potential problems will never be lucky with this. Any hdd-setup will fail due to the too high speed drive-access due to the dma-mode.
> Take care
Two questions:
1. Would this have side effects on built-in IDE controllers in Ultra 5
and 10? I didn't need to do anything special when installing or running
Sarge on these. My U10 at work runs very reliably at a default mdma2,
with a Seagate 80G drive capable of ATA100 (udma4?).
2. Doesn't the disabling of DMA make throughput really lousy? How about
a USB2 or firewire card and an external drivebox, if one must use IDE
drives?
>
> Dieter Jurzitza
>
>
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