Drive appears confused

Philz · n00b Joined: 31 Oct 2004 Posts: 51 Location: Switzerland

Hi all,

I searched the net for a while now and didn't find a solution to my problem:

I have a rather new P4 System with some drives attached to a promise tx2 controller and some
connected the normal way (p-ata, no raid or something-controller).

Now I'd like to install gentoo, but it keeps on telling me that it can't find a bootable medium.

I have a 3rd (1 and 2 are some sort of onboard sata-controller, I don't use them)
primary CD-ROM and slave is the harddisk I want to install.

I only have this error message (30x):
hda: cdrm_pc_intr: The drive appears confused (ireason = 0x1)
hda: cdrm_pc_intr: The drive appears confused (ireason = 0x1)
hda: cdrm_pc_intr: The drive appears confused (ireason = 0x1)
hda: cdrm_pc_intr: The drive appears confused (ireason = 0x1)
hda: cdrm_pc_intr: The drive appears confused (ireason = 0x1)
hda: cdrm_pc_intr: The drive appears confused (ireason = 0x1)
...

I have tried with 3 different drives now (CD DVD COMBO) but just can't find a solution,
can anyone help me please?
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Philz · n00b Joined: 31 Oct 2004 Posts: 51 Location: Switzerland

It seems to have to do with ICH6 (intel) boards and newer kernels 2.6.1x and up

http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/6/17/44

I did not try with acpi=off, but it boots just fine with 2004.3-r1

(doesn't detect my onboard NIC, but that's an other story)
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Philz · n00b Joined: 31 Oct 2004 Posts: 51 Location: Switzerland

It boots, but doesn't find my disk I want it to install on.

Seems to be a problem with ICH6

My mobo btw is an Asus P5GD1.
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slycordinator · Advocate Joined: 31 Jan 2004 Posts: 3065 Location: Korea

Philz · n00b Joined: 31 Oct 2004 Posts: 51 Location: Switzerland

I would, but it does not detect my harddisk where I want Gentoo on...

Does anyone know how to detect (pata) harddisks on ICH6 (with the kernel version on 2004.3-r1)?

Edit:
Do I need to load a module for that?
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slycordinator · Advocate Joined: 31 Jan 2004 Posts: 3065 Location: Korea

Try doing "modprobe ide-disk"

I remember sometimes that module doesn't get loaded even though it's neccesary to work.

nottings · n00b Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 2

I have an ASUS P4P800 and had a very similar problem. I just solved it...
in the BIOS, there is a setting for your IDE control. You have 2 options - enhanced mode and compatible mode.
This *must* be set to compatible mode.

This solved the problem for me... if it doesn't for you, try: gentoo noapic

Good luck!

Scott

Philz · n00b Joined: 31 Oct 2004 Posts: 51 Location: Switzerland

I think I saw that some where in the BIOS, not sure if it was for onboard IDE or onboard IDE-RAID/JBOD

I'll try that, thank you very much for that hint! (I've almost give up)
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Philz · n00b Joined: 31 Oct 2004 Posts: 51 Location: Switzerland

nice man! thank you!

First Page in BIOS there is "IDE Configuration" on the bottom, this gets you to a menu where you can set compatible mode, I chose primary PATA+SATA

Works fine - (it detected my disk)
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roguetoad · Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2005 4:55 am Post subject: Same problem but no bios fix

I get the same drive confused message with an NEC-1320 DVD-Writer on an add-on Promise UltraTX2 100 pci card.

There is no bios setting to fix the mode to compatible for the Promise card so this solution won't work for add-on cards. Anybody else get this error too? A googlewhack has turned up lots of hits but no answers as of yet

-A

Philz · n00b Joined: 31 Oct 2004 Posts: 51 Location: Switzerland

No settings in the controller BIOS? Hmm..

Well, is connecting the CD-Drive to the normal onboard IDE-Controller an option?
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roguetoad · Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2005 2:35 pm Post subject:

It is a possibility. I will try replacing the cable with a newer one (on the off chance it's bad) and barring that working also switching to an internal IDE controller. I was reluctant to change because I currently have 8drives on software raid5 in one logical volume and switching controllers for one of the drives is pretty much guaranteed to cause a rebuild of the array.

Philz · n00b Joined: 31 Oct 2004 Posts: 51 Location: Switzerland

Jesus christ - 8 drives in a _SOFTWARE_ raid?

Well, do you have a system drive that you will use for install or how does your "archtecture" look like?

1 sys drive for linux
8 for data

something like that?

If yes - I'd unplug all other drives while installing..
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roguetoad · Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2005 5:00 pm Post subject: My config

I actually have 7 250GB "data" drives and 1 300GB drive that is split so that 250GB are incorporated into the raid5 array giving me 1.75TB of usable data space + a partition for the system.

I'm actually waiting for the 500GB drives to drop in price, then I'll stuff another 1.5TB in the system with just a single 4port SATA controller.

Philz · n00b Joined: 31 Oct 2004 Posts: 51 Location: Switzerland

Oh.. ok. I'd make a backup first ;-)

No seriously, save the raid configuration somewhere, note which (physical) harddisk was which device for your current linux (map).

Takes some courage to do this - I would not have it.. :-)

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fofo412 · n00b Joined: 04 Apr 2005 Posts: 27

this post seriously saved me from pulling out my hair!

jmp_ · Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2006 10:11 pm Post subject:

QUOTE: "this post seriously saved me from pulling out my hair!"

hehehe xDDD why ?