No DMA with my Seagate 7200.7 harddrive.

Benedictus · n00b Joined: 10 Mar 2004 Posts: 5

I recently installed a fresh Gentoo system. When i boot, and the root filesystem is checked (reiser), i get a warning that DMA for my harddrive is off and filesystem check can take a while cause of that.
I installed a new drive a few days ago. It's a Seagate 7200.7. When i try to enable DMA with Hdparm, i get a warning that the operation is not permitted. So i dont know what else i can do to fix it. Everything else works fine by the way.

Earthwings · Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2004 11:14 pm Post subject:

Compile support for your IDE chipset into the kernel.

dsd · Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2004 11:15 pm Post subject:

sounds like you dont have support for your IDE controller compiled into the kernel.
post the output of "lspci". you might need to merge pcitutils first.
also let us know which kernel version you are running
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Benedictus · n00b Joined: 10 Mar 2004 Posts: 5

Still no progress. I'm working with a standard Gentoo install (2004.0), and kernel (gentoo-sources). I installed Gentoo before on the same system with no problems. The only difference is that it was with the previous version of Gentoo and a Maxtor D740X instead of a Seagate 7200.7.
I compiled the kernel with the apropriate VIA chipset. When that didn't work, i just compiled in every chipset in the list. That didn't work either. Then i decided to boot a Knoppix cd to check for hardware problems. Although DMA still wasnt automatically actived, i could turn it on with "hdparm -d1 /dev/hda". That worked, and i got decent performance to.
When i came back in Gentoo, same problem. No DMA. And a error message when i tried to enable it with "hdparm -d1 /dev/hda".
Because i got DMA and decent performance in Knoppix i think it isnt a hardware problem. I probably overlooked something. But what/where?

[edit]
I just saw that my harddrive is functioning properly in UDMA-mode in windows 2000 to. So that rules out any hardware problems.

dsd · Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2004 11:55 am Post subject:

could you upload your kernel .config and dmesg output to some webspace?
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Benedictus · n00b Joined: 10 Mar 2004 Posts: 5

dsd · Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2004 4:01 pm Post subject:

that doesnt make much sense. if you have the via driver compiled in, and it detects your VIA ide chip, it should print a boot message

from the source:

Benedictus · n00b Joined: 10 Mar 2004 Posts: 5

dsd · Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2004 6:32 pm Post subject:

im not sure of the solution, but i can tell you that the via 82xx driver does support your IDE controller (i even checked PCI ids), but the driver isnt being initialized on bootup (`dmesg | grep -i VP_IDE` should give output!)

i assume you have checked the obvious things (mounting /boot before copying over new kernel etc)?

you might also try using a vanilla kernel, newer than 2.4.22 to see if that makes any difference

also try starting from a fresh .config and working your way through again
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Benedictus · n00b Joined: 10 Mar 2004 Posts: 5

I don't have a separate /boot partition. I have a /, /tmp, /usr, /var and /home partition. I checked the obvious things (at least i think so).

Robin79 · Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2004 10:10 pm Post subject:

I have the same issue with a 2.6.4-rc1 kernel

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dsd · Posted: Mon Mar 15, 2004 11:18 pm Post subject:

how about 2.6.4 final? -rc1 is quite old now.. it may have been a bug that has been fixed
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Hara · Apprentice Joined: 25 Jan 2004 Posts: 162

*bump*

I'm having the same problem with my VIA chipset and 2.6 r(something) devsources kernel. Any new news?
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Gentree · Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2004 2:09 am Post subject:

I'm having same issue with 2.6.4 love sources. (was fine with 2.2.4 same hardware.)

The reason you dont see the same prob with you Knoppix is because it is not running 2.6 kernel.

Time for a few bug reports it seems!

Hara · Apprentice Joined: 25 Jan 2004 Posts: 162

Good to hear more people are having this problem and not just me. (or bad thing if you think about it)

Gentree · Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2004 1:28 pm Post subject:

yep, VIA here too.

kx7-333 , athlonXP 2000+
IDE chip via 82C586A or similar.

dsd · Posted: Fri Mar 19, 2004 10:57 pm Post subject:

gentree: does "dmesg | grep -i vp_ide" return anything?
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Gentree · Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2004 12:22 am Post subject:

Nope. not a sausage!

dsd · Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2004 8:50 pm Post subject:

hmm.. strange

i also have a KX7-333 running in a 2.4 box, which i will be upgrading to 2.6.4 very soon - i'll let you know if i have the same problem or not
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Gentree · Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2004 9:46 pm Post subject:

I looked in linux/.config and found two settings which seem like they should be active:

CONFIG_IDEDMA_AUTO
CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDMA

These were off so I edited them to .....=y

I ran make menuconfig , exited straight away and now see they are once again commented out in .config

I can see nowhere to access these options from menuconfig and they get commented out every time.

Are these redundant settings that are depreciated in 2.6 kernels or is this a but in menuconfig

Ideas?

Gentree · Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2004 10:19 pm Post subject:

OK , I think I have found it.

in menuconfig under DEVICE DRIVERS - ATA/ATAPI support ther is
PCI IDE chipset support

I understood this to mean IDE interface on an PCI card. It appears I was mistaken.

If you select this you them get Generic PCI DMA bus-master DMA which in turn opens a list of of chip support. in cludeing VIA82CXXX chipset .....That's me!

I am just rebuilding the kernel , but it seems pretty sure that this is the prob.

Gentree · Posted: Sat Mar 20, 2004 10:41 pm Post subject:

Yep, that got it.

dmesg | grep -i vp_ide now shows the chip is detected and dma is available.

Last kernel option is:

Use PCI DMA by default where available.

Apparently this is now off by default due to some unreliable hardware issues.

That should help a few people who posted similiar pbs. I think the menuconfig descriptors and help is rather badly worded here. Not inaccurate once you understand but misleading when you dont.

Vorsprung durch technik, as they say in Germany!

hakan · Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2004 4:41 pm Post subject:

Hm, doesn't fixed my problem.

I still get this message. Have I to enable anything by kernel parameters?
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hakan · Posted: Fri Apr 02, 2004 5:05 pm Post subject:

Ok, problem solved.

I had to add an kernel option: "dma=enabled".
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