[conspire] I get mail

Mon Jul 11 14:07:51 PDT 2005

----- Forwarded message from James Pruett <ebay2 at readynote.com> -----

From: James Pruett <ebay2 at readynote.com>
To: rick at linuxmafia.com
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 14:00:09 -0500
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.2180
Subject: RFI from james pruett.       HP-DC7600       Maxtor 6E040T0 40GB hardrive     IDE Intel 82801GB SATA Storage Controller 27c0 27df
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Rick,

You have a great webpage!
Thanks for publishing linuxmafia. (although I live near a real mobster, 
(thats another story) so the word mafia makes me shiver a bit...).

Anyway, I am begging for help in getting a new HP box working.
If you can help, I insist on sending a few
paypal bucks your way.

Anyway, the box is an HP-DC7600.
According to control panel in Windows-XP it has:
-Maxtor 6E040T0 40GB hardrive.
-IDE Intel 82801GB SATA Storage Controller 27c0 27df

Linux FC3 doesnt find the harddrive, so I am stuck...
HP says use Suse-9.3, but I wanted to try Redhat if possible.
Not sure what/how to put in the SATA-driver.

Any suggestions for this newbie??
Thanks Rick,
Sincerely,
Jim Pruett
(901) 338-7666

----- End forwarded message -----

>From rick at linuxmafia.com Mon Jul 11 14:06:46 2005
Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2005 14:06:46 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: James Pruett <ebay2 at readynote.com>
Subject: Re: RFI from james pruett.       HP-DC7600       Maxtor 6E040T0 40GB hardrive     IDE Intel 82801GB SATA Storage Controller 27c0 27df
Message-ID: <20050711210646.GS12327 at linuxmafia.com>
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X-Mas: Bah humbug.
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Quoting James Pruett (ebay2 at readynote.com):

> You have a great webpage!
> Thanks for publishing linuxmafia. (although I live near a real mobster, 
> (thats another story) so the word mafia makes me shiver a bit...).

I can well imagine.

> Anyway, I am begging for help in getting a new HP box working.
> If you can help, I insist on sending a few
> paypal bucks your way.

The gesture is appreciated, and you're definitely a gentleman, but it's 
really not needed.  

> Anyway, the box is an HP-DC7600.
> According to control panel in Windows-XP it has:
> -Maxtor 6E040T0 40GB hardrive.
> -IDE Intel 82801GB SATA Storage Controller 27c0 27df

Googling on "82801GB sata linux", one finds out that this is an Intel
ICH7-family South Bridge chip.  Looks like (through more googling)
libata support (inside libata's ata_piix driver) for ICH7 was introduced
with kernel version 2.6.10-ac11, which is to say, Alan Cox's ("ac's")
patches to the prerelease version of kernel version 2.6.10.  

My own page's entry for ICH7 is at
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html#intel-ich7, but basically
says that it should work with either of the two driver families that
support ICH5/ICH6.  But, a few words about that:  A company like Intel
will have a successful family of chips like ICH5, and suddenly someone
on the Linux kernel development mailing list will talk about, say, a new
Dell that has some brand-new, never-before-seen variant on ICH5 for
which the longtime driver doesn't quite work.  More often than not, the
driver code doesn't autodetect that new version of the hardware.

The kernel driver programmers (e.g., Jeff Garzik) look into the matter,
and say "Aha!  This chip has a new PCI ID that we weren't on the lookout
for."  Or "Aha!  This chip has its I/O port at a previously unused
address."  Or something like that.  So, the coder submits a patch to the
existing (say) ata_piix driver to make the driver henceforth be on the
lookout for that newer twist on an otherwise not-really-changed chip.

Your problem, it seems, is that FC3's installation kernel isn't recent
enough.  Yet another quick check using Google suggests that FC3's
installer uses kernel 2.6.9.  So, there you go.  Would you consider
using FC4?  It installs using kernel 2.6.11.

> Not sure what/how to put in the SATA-driver.
> 
> Any suggestions for this newbie??

Well, let's back up a minute.  Since your underlying problem -- and it's
a rather common one among people who try loading J. Random Linux
Distribution on _very recent_ hardware -- is that the installation
kernel isn't recent enough, the two most-obvious ways around the problem
are as follows:

1.  Use a different installer that uses a more-recent installation
kernel.  E.g., Fedora Core 4.

2.  Compile separately (from very recent driver source code) a
leading-edge driver (e.g., ata_piix.c), and then slip it into the
running installer during runtime, e.g., by "insmod"ing the driver
from a floppy disk.

The second of those methods is complicated to perform and very geeky --
and basically not something a new Linux user would want to tackle
without dire necessity.  So, on the whole, I think you'd want to use the
first route.  (Note:  FC4 certainly isn't the only distro with a modern 
installation kernel.  I just mention it because you said you tried FC3.)

Just for the sake of completeness, there are also even more arcane and
creative workarounds, e.g.:

3.  Temporarily insert a PCI-type SATA card into your PC that FC3 is
more likely to support, and temporarily connect your SATA drive(s) to
that.  _Or_, temporarily put a legacy PATA = old-type-IDE hard drive
(and, if necessary, PATA card) into your PC.  In either case, install
FC3 onto there.  Then, having bootstrapped initial Linux installation 
using easier-to-support hardware, retrieve cutting-edge kernel source
code.  Compile a new kernel, which (unlike the installer kernel) can
be expected to have good support for ICH7.  Then, migrate your installed
system over to hard drives connected to the ICH7 chip.

As you can probably imagine, workarounds like that get used only by the
very determined.

I hope that helps.

-- 
Cheers,                                         kill -9 them all.               
Rick Moen                                       Let init sort it out.           
rick at linuxmafia.com