Fedora Core 2, Adaptec ASH-1233 pci ide controller ultra ata card

[Mitch Wiedemann]

Hi folks,
I recently purchased an Adaptec ASH-1233 pci ide controller "Ultra ATA" 
card, and had some trouble getting it to work properly in my computer.  
I have resolved the problem, so I thought I'd post the details here just 
in case anyone is in the same boat.

SITUATION:
I have in my computer two hard disk drives (/dev/hda & /dev/hdb), and 
two CD drives (/dev/scd0 (CDRW) and /dev/hdd (DVD)) connected to the 
motherboard IDE controller.  I wanted to add a second IDE controller so 
that I could plug in other disk drives if needed.  I went to the local, 
over-priced,  rebate-mongering, big, yellow, technology store and 
bought  an Adaptec ASH-1233 "Ultra ATA" card.

PROBLEM:
When I installed the card and connected some extra hard disk drives to 
its cables, the Fedora Core 2 Linux kernel loaded the drivers for the 
ide controllers in the wrong order.  It loaded the Adaptec ASH-1233 
driver first, thereby making the spare drives attached to it /dev/hda 
and /dev/hdc (they were both set as single, master devices on their 
respective cables).  My motherboard ide controller driver was loaded 
next, causing my existing Linux drives to become /dev/hde and /dev/hdf 
and my CD drives /dev/hdg and /dev/hdh!  The system would boot, but the 
swap and my home partition were unavailable.

SOLUTION:
After much Googling, I found that the solution is to use a kernel 
parameter "ide=reverse" in the /boot/grub/grub.conf file to force the 
kernel to load the ide controller drivers in reverse order from the way 
they are found on the PCI bus. (use "lspci" to see the order of your PCI 
devices on the bus)

So this is what I did:

0. make a backup copy of /boot/grub/grub.conf
1. edit /boot/grub/grub.conf  (you must have root privileges to do this) 
and change the default kernel section (usually the first kernel section 
listed in the file)

FROM:

title Fedora Core (2.6.7-1.494.2.2)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.7-1.494.2.2 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
        initrd /initrd-2.6.7-1.494.2.2.img

TO: (notice the "kernel" line is changed):

title Fedora Core (2.6.7-1.494.2.2)
        root (hd0,0)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.7-1.494.2.2 ro ide=reverse root=LABEL=/ rhgb 
quiet
        initrd /initrd-2.6.7-1.494.2.2.img

After this, I rebooted the computer, and everything was back to normal, 
and I can now connect four more drives if I need to.

Hope this helps.

-- 
Mitch Wiedemann
mc^2 Computer Consulting
mc2 at lightlink.com
http://www.lightlink.com/mc2