Open-ended comment about F8 and above hardware issues

[Bill Davidsen]

Michael W Cocke wrote:
> On Fri, 22 Feb 2008 18:57:09 -0600, you wrote:
> 
>> Michael W Cocke wrote:
>>> Just a passing comment - hopefully it will start a discussion and I'll
>>> learn something.  I have a pair of seriously hacked P4 systems (3 IDE
>>> controllers including the motherboard, all IDE controllers fully
>>> populated, 2 NICs, 3.6+ TB, 2 GB of ram).  I can install Fedora 7 on
>>> them and it works pretty well 'out of the box'.  Try to go to any
>>> higher version and the installer dies, or data is corrupted as it's
>>> written, or any number of other bad things.  
>>>
>>> What did they change that makes such a huge difference?  I know the
>>> hardware is weird and I'd understand if Fedora never worked, but it
>>> worked great - up to F8.
>>>
>> They changed the IDE drivers that are being used, and are treating 
>> all the drives as SCSI drives when you get above the hardware 
>> specific drivers.
>>
>> Mikkel
> 
> I knew about everything being handled as SCSI, but I didn't make the
> connection that it was using completely different IDE drivers.(Duh!)
> Apparently the new drivers are much less robust.
> 
Actually I don't believe that's the case, but they may well be better at 
identifying problems older drivers missed. Having just installed 
FC8-Unity on a similar system, 5xPATA disk, one PATA CD, four channels 
on the motherboard and two on a Promise card, I feel fairly secure in 
saying that your system has some issue.

I suggest booting the "rescue CD" and then looking very carefully at the 
dmesg output regarding your devices. One area which has been changed is 
80 pin cable detection handling, but the output should tell more.

Hint: posting the output here would be likely to enrich the discussion.

> Is there a way to revert back to the older drivers?
> 
I believe there's a kernel boot parameter, but I can't remember what it 
is. Try "combined_mode=ide" or "combined_mode=libata" and see if that 
changes you problem. Using the ide option chould change names back to 
hda, etc, IIRC.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot