Owen Heisler wrote: > I have an Abit AX8 motherboard, specifications here: > http://www.abit-usa.com/products/mb/techspec.php?categories=1&model=215 > with Athlon 64 3000+. > I have tried both 3.1r2 i386 stable and 3.1r0a amd64 stable. > > The motherboard has four SATA ports. I want to use three of these ports > for software RAID5. I am trying a single SATA drive on each of the > ports. The first and second work fine with the Debian installer, but > the third and fourth are not detected at all.
Most likely ports 1 and 2 are handled by the native VIA 8237 Chipset (which has support in Debian 3.1r1 Sarge 2.6 Kernel, IIRC), whereas ports 3 and 4 are handled by another 3rd party Chip (Marvell perhaps)...your Mobo Manual will explain this. > BIOS detects the drive > anywhere. It was suggested on IRC to set up a single-drive JBOD array, > but the BIOS utility doesn't allow that. There are no options in the > BIOS for SATA drives other than disabling the onboard RAID utility, > which doesn't help. > > I know I don't have any hardware problems because I have successfully > installed Fedora Core 5 on the drive when connected to the third port. Since FC5 is much more 'cutting edge' than Sarge (Stable) , I'd expect this behavior > Why doesn't Debian detect the drive? More importantly, what can I do to > make it detect it? Look into loading the module needed for support of that 3rd party Chip that handles SATA ports 3 and 4 -- check your FC5 log files for the correct module perhaps. > I have tried all (only two) of the parameters for > the sata_via (or via_sata) module. > > Thanks. I wish I knew 'exactly' what to tell you to get this done, but Kenshi's backport (mentioned by another) may do the 'trick' (have support for your 3rd party Chip) already. Consider a real RAID5/6 PCI card - that mobo seems to support RAID0/1 ...and 0+1(using Both SATA Controllers). I realize you want a Software RAID5, but most of those cheaper OnBoard RAID solutions are already a "software emulation" even though a Hardware Chip is involved -- similar (in a sense) to the WinModem trickery that many PCI Modems use - so I'd think your in for some headbanging and hairpulling even if you gain support for SATA ports 3 and 4. What to do ? * See Rick Moens SATA page <http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html> * delve into the comp.os.linux.hardware ng archives :-) * Roll your own distro <http://www.debian.org/CD/jigdo-cd/> * Read more about the Debian Installers <http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Debian/installers.html> * Use a more 'cutting edge' version (testing or unstable) Regards __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
