FC3 and SATA (un)support

[Aleksandar Milivojevic]

Alberto M R Davila wrote:
> I keep having trouble to install FC3 in SATA HDs and have already submit
> the bug to bugzilla:
> 
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=136995
> 
> Could anyone kindly let me know abot any sucessful story of FC3 with SATA
> HDs ? I wonder to know there would be a "simple" way for that... I know
> "simple" is not always "simple" but any details of the simplest way would
> be greatly appreciated.

I had no problems with SATA disks/controlers under Linux, as long as the 
controler was listed as supported.  Those unsupported always worked when 
set to parallel ATA emulation mode in BIOS.

Just couple of wild guesses, things to try.  Maybe it will help, maybe not.

Do you have fake-RAID support enabled in the BIOS by any chance?  If 
yes, disable it.  It will not work under Linux, and it is software RAID 
anyhow (Linux software RAID is usually faster and more reliable than 
those fake-RAID stuff in BIOS).

You said you were able to install, but system hangs on boot.  This is 
kind of strange.  Does Grub load the kernel and initrd and than things 
hang, or it hangs right after POST before Grub takes over?

If former, try booting from CD into rescue more (type linux rescue on 
boot prompt), let Anaconda configure network and mount your Fedora 
installation.  When you get shell prompt, chroot /mnt/sysimage, download 
latest kernel update, rpm -ihv kernel-whatever.rpm, try booting with it. 
  Maybe it will help, maybe not.

If later, check if Grub is installed at all.  Try reinstalling it by 
hand (boot into rescue, chroot /mnt/sysimage, grub-install).

If nothing helps, you can always set SATA controler in BIOS to emulate 
parallel ATA -- this always works (works even for Red Hat 7.x that does 
not have any support for SATA).

Oh, one more thing.  This is not related to SATA (happens on systems 
with PATA and/or SCSI too).  On some motherboards I hade problems with 
race condition in init script (the one that loads drivers from initrd 
image).  What exactly do you see on the screen before system hangs?  Is 
it complaining about not able to mount root partition, not able to find 
any disks, or something like that?  Remove "quiet" and "rhgb" options 
from Grub to see if system is complaining about something like that.

-- 
Aleksandar Milivojevic <amilivojevic at pbl.ca>    Pollard Banknote Limited
Systems Administrator                           1499 Buffalo Place
Tel: (204) 474-2323 ext 276                     Winnipeg, MB  R3T 1L7