generic HW question about SATA

James Wilkinson fedora at aprilcottage.co.uk
Tue Feb 20 22:05:36 UTC 2007


Kevin J. Cummings wrote:
> Yes.  Most SATA support is through a SATA device driver which either
> needs to be built directly into your kernel, or a module pre-loaded
> through your initrd image.  I recently added 2 SATA drives to my already
> running PATA system.  Since I was still booting with my hda drive as my
> boot drive, I didn't have to change anything.  I just made sure that the
> sata_nv driver was included in my initrd, and when I booted, linux found
> my SATA drives.

Actually, you might not have needed to put sata_nv into your initrd.

The SATA device driver needs to be loaded into the kernel before you
attempt to use a SATA disk. But it only needs to be compiled in or in
initrd if you need it to access your boot or root partitions.

Once the kernel has booted and mounted the root partition, it can then 
load other modules it needs from /lib/modules (for example, when it's
trying to mount other partitions).

So if you use traditional IDE modules to get that far, you don't need
SATA in your initrd.

James.
-- 
E-mail:     james@ | a11y: There's a sense of irony in a term defining
aprilcottage.co.uk | accessability which makes non tech savvy people go
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                   |     -- Dave Jones




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