[(sort of) solved] DVD drive lost after installation

rainer · Last edited by rainer on Sun Aug 26, 2007 1:56 pm; edited 1 time in total

Probably, I'm missing something very simple and obvious, but I have been googling and searching this forum and did not find a solution:

I have a nice new laptop where I have just installed Gentoo, and everything is fine so far except:

The DVD drive, that was happily booting the 2007.0 minimal CD, is simply not available after installation. The hard disk and its partitions show up as sda1 etc., but there is no way (for me...) to find the DVD drive. I tried /dev/hdd (what, if I remember correctly, was what the install CD said), I tried /dev/sr0 (what the Sabayon Live DVD says), I looked in /dev - nothing!

The BIOS recognizes it as IDE1 slave (/dev/sda is on IDE0 master, obviously).

Did I miss something compiling my kernel (2.6.20-r

? But, strange enough, Sabayon which I have installed in another partition, also doesn't see the drive.

Sorry for this somewhat sketchy posting; I'm just clueless (and this is not my first Gentoo install!), and I'll be more than happy to take some flaming if I can get help how to find the DVD drive!

Thanks,
Rainer

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun May 27, 2007 1:01 pm Post subject:

rainer,

Please show us your lspci - Its probably a missing kernel option
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

rainer · Posted: Sun May 27, 2007 1:24 pm Post subject:

NeddySeagoon,

Thanks for looking at my strange problem!

Here the complete lspci output:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun May 27, 2007 2:13 pm Post subject:

rainer,

I suspected it was an Intel ICH7 chip set. They have some shared registers between the IDE and SATA interfaces and need a novel kernel setup. Under

rainer · Posted: Sun May 27, 2007 2:44 pm Post subject:

Thanks - compiling the new kernel while writing this...

I did not find

rainer · Posted: Sun May 27, 2007 2:57 pm Post subject:

Unfortunately no change - the DVD remains invisible.
What kind of info / log / output would help?
Thanks,
Rainer

rainer · Posted: Sun May 27, 2007 3:02 pm Post subject:

I found this in the gentoo-wiki but not sure

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun May 27, 2007 3:14 pm Post subject:

rainer,

In the dim and distant past, we used to use

rainer · Posted: Mon May 28, 2007 7:10 am Post subject:

Thanks a lot but unfortunately still no progress. I read (or better, had a serious look at...) the reading material you gave me but while I understand bits and pieces, I could get the bigger picture yet. I tried the various kernel commands but no effect.

I try to find out why the 2007.0 Minimal CD does the trick. Here some snippets from dmesg:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Mon May 28, 2007 9:21 pm Post subject:

rainer,

rainer · Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 4:08 pm Post subject:

NeddySeagoon,

Thanks very much and I have learned a lot in the meantime - unfortunately without getting the drive to work.

I had started from the scratch and have the most recent 2.6.21-r2 kernel now, which was a bit different in its configuration. Here some snippets that I believe cover the important sections:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue May 29, 2007 7:52 pm Post subject:

rainer,

With

rainer · Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 7:08 am Post subject:

NeddySeagoon,

You are right and I was wondering, but disabling CONFIG_IDE is what the link "Fix ICH7" said.

But anyway, about seventeen kernels later I sort of come to the copnclusion that the key is in the line

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 6:42 pm Post subject:

rainer,

Post the links you found please.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

rainer · Posted: Wed May 30, 2007 8:42 pm Post subject:

Here we go:

http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/3/3/96
That is a very interesting one, with real comments from Linus (wow) but not sure whether it relates to my problem.

http://www.nabble.com/Can-not-boot--2.6.20-15.25-tf3575296.html
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ubuntu.devel.kernel.general/860/focus=864

There is more but a lot of duplication and some that quite obviously (to me, at least) talk about different stuff.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Thu May 31, 2007 6:10 pm Post subject:

rainer,

This wiki page may help. Its for a 2.6.14 or 2.6.16 kernel but its still relavent.

This thread in the French forum also offers some help. Luckily for me, its almost all in Englisg.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

rainer · Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 12:04 pm Post subject:

Dear NeddySeagoon,

I'm afraid this is dead end.

I have looked at the two links you gave me, and followed the links that took off from these posts.
I have compiled dozens of different kernels with all kind of options en- or disabled.
I have been using all kinds of kernel commands, alone and mixed.

OK, although I tried to do it systematically, I may have missed some combinations, but altogether I think I have been doing everything that was suggested and successful in other cases. However, for me, without fail and without any variation, these lines in dmesg did not change one bit (except the dernel commans, obviously):

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 12:53 pm Post subject:

rainer,

To use the settings from the minimal CD, boot it and make a copy of its /proc/config.gz file.
Thats a gzipped version of its kernel config.

Get a nice clean kernel tree, of the same version as the liveCD kernel and use the file (decompressed) as its .config.
Run make oldconfig, which should not ask any questions. Now you have the same kernel as the liveCD.
Before you build it, change the modules you need to boot from modules to build in. Do not make any other changes
This will get you the same kernel as the liveCD but it will not need an initrd.
Using this kernel, you should be able to reproduce liveCD behaviour in your system.
Do you get DMA on your optical drive ?

Next, optimise the kernel settings to your taste (don't change kernel versions) HDD and optical drive still OK?
If so, migrate to a later kernel and retest.

I'm out of ideas otherwise.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

rainer · Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 1:19 pm Post subject:

OK, thanks.

I will try to work from the low end (the minimal CD settings) gradually up, over time, may take a week or two. If I discover something interesting, I will post it here.

I don't need the DVD desparately, so that's OK, and I have a running Sabayon installation on another partition, so being rpoductive is alos no issue. I have learned a lot so far and look forward to get even more into the details.

Thanks again for your help so far!

Rgds,
Rainer

anroy · n00b Joined: 19 May 2007 Posts: 25

rainer · Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 11:05 am Post subject:

Not sure if I understand.
You want to see the complete output of dmesg and .config with options set like above?
Please tell me - willhappily do!
Rgds,
Rainer

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 12:00 pm Post subject:

anroy,

The file is /usr/src/linux/.config but its not being edited directly - and it must not be.
Its being changed using

anroy · n00b Joined: 19 May 2007 Posts: 25

anroy · n00b Joined: 19 May 2007 Posts: 25

Wait a minute... I just discovered that
/usr/src/linux is a link to /usr/src/linux-2.6.9

Whoa, that really confused and surprised me, because after I navigated into /usr/src/linux, that was also the path in the address bar!

This is different from Windows, where if you click on a folder shortcut the address bar will display the real name of the folder, not the shortcut name.

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Mon Jun 04, 2007 2:24 pm Post subject:

anroy,

This 'trick' is used to give the kernel a fixed name, no matter what version it is.
It allows other programs that need to find the kernel sources to look for /usr/src/linux and find the kernel.

You should use the ./Documentation folder in the kernel tree of interest, it may have changed for other kernel versions.

Linux is not like Windows, and a symbolic link is not like a Windows shortcut.
A symlink is an alternative name for the file/dir its linked to.

Be warned that the vfat filesystem does not support symlinks, which can cause strange breakages when you try to use them there.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.