boot from sata optical disk

chaumess · n00b Joined: 11 Sep 2003 Posts: 64

I recently replaced my dead lite-on dvd drive with a sleek new plextor px716-sa, dual layer +/- rw serial ata drive.

It works fine with the 2.6.11 kernel, but requires a modification to include/linux/libata.h in the kernel source, to activate ATAPI support in the SATA driver.

The 2005.0 boot cd, unfortunately, does not seem to work with this hardware. I can't remember the exact error, but it goes through and lists all the /dev/ nodes it tried, looking for the cdrom, but not finding it anywhere. I am using the doscsi kernel option, so presumably, the kernel on the livecd is not capable of booting from my drive.

What should I do now? Does anyone know for sure if, for instance, Knoppix or Gnoppix or Slax will boot with this hardware?

Or is there a way I can replace the kernel on the gentoo livecd, to customize it to support my hardware?

Are these drives on anyone's radar screens yet? Is this worthy of a bug report for the livecd?

gmorgan_va · n00b Joined: 02 Apr 2005 Posts: 9 Location: Virginia, USA

I think I have the 712 serial-ata drive which is not dual layer, but same problem with the 2005.0 CD. I successfully booted Knoppix 3.7 [En] on this same system and it found both the CD drive and my serial ata hard drive.

This machine (nForce4 Ultra with SIL3114 also - MSI Neo4 Platinum, AMD64 3500+, 1GB PC3200 ram) has nothing installed on it so I'm willing to try some things if anyone has some ideas (other than go out and buy a parallel ATA drive). I'd like to help troubleshoot/fix this problem.

I intend to update the bios on this board (from 1.1 to 1.2) soon and see if that helps. The fact that Knoppix has no problem makes me think it is a 2005.0 bug.

chaumess · n00b Joined: 11 Sep 2003 Posts: 64

interesting... knoppix doesn't seem to work for me.

sphantom · n00b Joined: 16 Jul 2003 Posts: 72

I have the same drive (px-716sa), and this problem has frustrated me endlessly. I have yet to be able to get gentoo to use the drive. I've tried various combinations of gentoo-(dev)sources and vanilla sources, defined atapi support in libata.h, and even applied the latest libata patches from jgarzik's site. The best I have been able to do so far is get the kernel to identify and recognize the drive at startup, only to not be able to mount or do anything with the drive

I'm running udev, on an abit 925xe, if that matters.. For the record, I've limited most of my testing to using ahci, as I'd prefer keeping my mobo out of legacy ide mode since i have no ide legacy devices.

I havent tried knoppix yet, but just may soon.

If anyone has the same drive and is able to properly use it, please post your .config and kernel version..

thanks

-sp

chaumess · n00b Joined: 11 Sep 2003 Posts: 64

Sorry to hear it's not working out for you. I'm running 2.6.11-gentoo-r4 (gentoo-dev-sources). All I did was change

/usr/src/linux/include/linux/libata.h, from

sphantom · n00b Joined: 16 Jul 2003 Posts: 72

how is your IDE configured in the bios?

do you have an option to select IDE, RAID, or AHCI? If so, which are you using? I have an ICH6R, so im not sure what differences (if any) there are bios wise

-sp

gmorgan_va · n00b Joined: 02 Apr 2005 Posts: 9 Location: Virginia, USA

We are talking about very different configurations here. In my case (see above post) I have a serial ATA DVD/CD drive hanging off an nForce4 Ultra bridge chip. All the "working" cases are using Intel bridges (ICH6 or ICH5). I know, these should be similar but I think there is an issue with either libATA or the nv_sata module (or both) in the newer kernels. My Knoppix 3.7 CD has both a 2.4 and a 2.6 kernel on it. I have only tried the 2.4 and it worked fine. I'll have to try the 2.6 kernel on that CD tonight and see if it has the same problems.

Incidently I tried turning off the parallel ATA channels and it did not change anything. Also the BIOS detects my first SATA drive as IDE Master 3 and I currently have my DVD/CD drive as IDE Master 6 (SATA 4). I have not seen anything about AHCI in the BIOS so I'll look for that also.

gmorgan_va · n00b Joined: 02 Apr 2005 Posts: 9 Location: Virginia, USA

Ok, I put my Knoppix 3.7 [En] cd back in my system and did some more tests. The default kernel on this CD is a 2.4.x kernel which finds all my SATA resources just fine (hard drive on SATA1 is /dev/hde and Plextor 712A on SATA4 is /dev/hdk -- looks like the IDE/ATA code reserves two device nodes to each IDE channel and considers each SATA port an IDE channel.)

Anyway, the 2.4 kernel works great. Then I tried the knoppix26 kernel and it does the same thing that the Gentoo 2005.0 Universal Install CD does. It can't find any of the SATA drives and yells at me when it can't find the CD.

Let me know what I can try to fix this or any data I can capture to help this get fixed.

IT · Posted: Sat Jun 11, 2005 4:01 am Post subject:

...hopefully this will be resolved soon. I have this problem...and while I debate installing a regular ide cdrom into my box to get past this issue...I'm hoping a new livecd with a fix will appear...anyone have any updates on SATA DVD/CDroms and live cd booting yet?

gmorgan_va · n00b Joined: 02 Apr 2005 Posts: 9 Location: Virginia, USA

Well, I haven't posted in a while but have figured some things out.

1. libata makes sata drives show up as scsi disks in 2.6.x kernels
2. The hacked support in 2.4 for sata assigns two hdX devices to each sata port whether there is a device or not.

So, if you build a new knoppix disk with a kernel with libata support it should pick up your sata devices as scsi devices.f

How to enable libata in kernel 2.6.12-rc4 (in menuconfig):

SCSI Device Support -> SCSI Low Level Drivers -> Serial ATA (SATA) support

enable the SATA drivers you need. Also in SCSI you probably need to enable at least scsi disk support and scsi cdrom support.

Hope this helps. I had to install knoppix to the hard drive and then keep mucking with newer kernels until I could get this to work. fortunately the knoppix support programs (binutils, etc) are new enough to support all the newer kernels (so far).

I'm kinda interested in trying to boot the latest debian and suse releases on this system to see what hardware their default kernels pick up.

TheLegend81 · Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2005 12:09 am Post subject:

I also suffer from the same problem.

Trying to install the 2005.1 flavor of the AMD64 Universal Live CD.

Relivent System specs are:
MB: ASUS A8N-SLI DEluxe
CD/DVD: Plextor PX-716SA
CPU : AMD64 3500+ (socket 939)

The error I get is "No mountable media found" or something.

gmorgan_va · n00b Joined: 02 Apr 2005 Posts: 9 Location: Virginia, USA

Well I finally broke down and purchased a parallel ATA optical drive. libata is supposed to be far enough along to support SATA ATAPI devices soon. If I knew more about the linux kernel I would contribute to the development process of libata, but not there yet. Hopefully ATAPI SATA support will be here soon for those people who have cutting edge hardware.

robbyjo · Guru Joined: 06 Apr 2003 Posts: 462

I had the same "No mountable media found" error, but my DVD-RW drive is parallel. Is it required to have it in the first slot?