[mythtv-users] OT: Problem mounting root from an sata drive with 2.6.5 kernel and libata

Gerald Schepens schepens at shaw.ca
Tue May 25 02:54:23 EDT 2004


Well, I grabbed knoppix.  [Rather a lack of North American mirrors -- 
had good luck from Greenland; that may have had something to do with 
using lftp which rocks, and being Canadian, they're close by.]  I booted 
both the 2.4 and the 2.6 kernels but my sata drive didn't show up either 
way.  I didn't fool around with it for super long.  There was probably 
more I could have done, but it didn't automatically find the drive.  It 
didn't seem to find the Promise controller either.

When I compiled the 2.6 kernel, there was a specific setting for Promise 
sata controller support.  You didn't mention what type of controller 
yours was, unless you meant that it's actually a Via. 

I will continue looking at this over the next while, and try to find out 
whether the Promise sata support is actually included with knoppix.  In 
the meantime if anyone has gotten libata working with the Promise 378 
controller, especially with the 2.6 kernel, I'd love to hear some 
details about what you did.  In particular, if you had used the ft3xx 
driver in the past, was the existing sata drive data present when you 
used libata, or did you have to repartition and start over?  (I'm not so 
sure I'm that gung ho to get rid of ft3xx.)

David wrote:

> Gerald Schepens wrote:
>
>> Is anyone running a 2.6.x kernel with an sata drive as root, using 
>> the libata driver for the sata drive?  I'm having a time trying to 
>> get root to mount.  It may be due to the libata driver naming the 
>> drive devices differently from my current driver under 2.4.20.
>> The issue seems to be that I'm not passing the correct "root=" 
>> parameter to the kernel.  I used to use root=LABEL=/ but that doesn't 
>> work.  I've since tried just about every variation I can think of for 
>> other possibilities, but I have gotten nowhere so far.
>
>
> No, sorry. I boot from pata - other than that:
> I'm using 2.6.4 with libata, Via SATA + PATA drives lvm2'ed for /myth 
> though.
> Typically I expect you'll have 4 pata channels -> hda,hdb on ide0 
> ,hdc,hdd on ide1
> so try /dev/hde or hdf as your sata (that's what mine is) on ide2 (I 
> see later you've begun)
>
>> I was using the Promise 378 serial ATA driver, ft3xx.o, which is a 
>> partial-source proprietary driver that I was eager to get rid of.  
>> With that driver, my sata drive is /dev/sda, with the various 
>> partitions on it as /dev/sda1 (/boot) and /dev/sda2 (root).  I've 
>> googled that various people have used /dev/md0, /dev/atadrive/d0p2, 
>> or /dev/hdg2, or ...
>
>
> /dev/sda is sata as scsi isn't it?
>
>> The controller gets detected, as does the (single) drive, which is 
>> mentioned in a message: "scsi1: WD0200...".  md runs an autodetect on 
>> raid arrays and while it doesn't say that it sees anything, it 
>> doesn't say anything under the 2.4.20 kernel either.  The first 
>> evidence of trouble is that mount gets an error 22 while trying to 
>> mount an ext3 volume.  (This is if I give "root=/dev/hda2", for 
>> instance.  If I start with a "root=" that I'm not confident actually 
>> is a valid drive / device partition, such as /dev/hde2,  it's an 
>> error 6 from mount.)  Then I get a kernel panic because the kernel 
>> could not mount the root volume.
>>
>> A quick rundown of the hardware setup:  It's an Asus P4PE 
>> motherboard, with two IDE controllers
>
>
> physical controllers or your usual 2 channels per motherboard?
> (Don't controllers usually/often have two channels.)
>
>> and the Promise 378 SATA controller.  On IDE 1, I have one hard drive 
>> (/dev/hda under 2.4.20).  On IDE 2, I have a CDR/W (/dev/scd0) and a 
>> DVD-R/W (/dev/scd1).  The SATA controller controls one SATA drive, 
>> which is "1+0 striped" but not mirrored (/dev/sda).  I have been 
>> running the two CD / DVD drives as SCSI emulations.
>
>
> hde hdf hdg hdh may be on controller 2
> so try hdi for sata
>
>> It's possible that the libata / Promise modules are trying to read 
>> the drive in a format that renders the data already present on it 
>> unintelligible.  Thus far I've used the proprietary driver and maybe 
>> the libata setup won't play nice with the data already present on the 
>> disk.  Comments?
>
>
> Sounds like a reasonable comment.
> stick an ATA disk in and boot 2.6 from it sounds like an easy way to 
> find out - at least dmesg/fdisking will show you partitions etc.
> In fact I *think* knoppix just came out with a 2.6 based CD - you can 
> boot from that dead easily!!
> www.knoppix.org
> (Yup, re-reading prior to posting and this sounds like your best bet 
> to read dmesg from a 2.6 kernel without diddling *any* hardware.)
>
>> I've googled, I've fiddled around, I don't know what to do next.  My 
>> only recourse at this point is to throw the question out there and 
>> hope that one of you has a similar setup and has had more success 
>> than I have had.
>>
>> Other questions that I might as well throw out now, since if I get 
>> the 2.6.5 kernel working they'll be the next things I'm going to want 
>> to know:
>> - How good is the ivtv support with kernel 2.6.x?  (I run a pvr350 as 
>> capture / TV out card.)
>
>
> I love it - from my sample of 1 + very occasional observations 
> (including posts on the ivtv list) I think its quite a bit more stable 
> than 2.4
>
>> - How about lirc under 2.6.x?
>
>
> There were problems last time I looked at using the PVR's RC under 2.6 
> - IIRC that maybe fixed - search the archives.
> I use homebrew trans/recv and it's fine.
>
>>
>> Thanks for your collective wisdom and patience,
>
>
> 's ok :)
>
> If you find any more about 2.6 and Myth etc then there is a wiki at 
> www.mythtv.info
> It's unofficial and has been the subject of much controversy (see 
> archives) but you may want to contribute any findings back there in 
> preparation for the inevitable increase in Myth/2.6 FAQs (+ as you 
> said, some of the sata stuff is pretty off topic for myth but fine on 
> the wiki)
>
> David
>
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