Hi I've done more tests (basically recompiled and installed 2 times the same kernel) with linux-5.17.5 but I am still having no luck : I can't figure out why it does not detect the controller ... I've checked the config and the drivers for the controller (ata_piix , ata_generic ) are built but they are not loaded at the initramfs stage. I've tried to put them explicitly in the initramfs via /etc/initramfs-tools/modules but nothing worked.
So I decided to give a try to linux 5.18-rc4 : I've reverted the commit d6b88ce2eb9d , recompiled , installed in the target machine , rebooted and BINGO !! The system boots almost with the same config used for compiling linux 5.17.5 :) uname -a Linux <myhost> 5.18.0-rc4 #1 PREEMPT Fri Apr 29 11:12:55 CEST 2022 i686 GNU/Linux cat /proc/version Linux version 5.18.0-rc4 (<user>@<64bit_hostname>) (gcc (Debian 11.3.0-1) 11.3.0, GNU ld (GNU Binutils for Debian) 2.38) #1 PREEMPT Fri Apr 29 11:12:55 CEST 2022 The deb package I built is basically an optimized kernel for my machine with only the modules for the internal devices and the external components I have , so to be quick at building a new kernel ; it's not suitable for other systems. For who would like to try to build standard deb-flavour kernels in a quicker way in a faster machine, I can say that in the past I managed a 32 bit build host via virtual machine in my 64 bit machine to build deb packages I needed for my 32 bit system (basically, it was a minimal 32 bit debian unstable distribution installed as a virtualbox machine) : it was - and it is still now in my opinion - the easiest way to have a build host for 32 bit packages in a 64 bit environment because I found more complicated setting up a full cross compile environment .
