Finally Linux working on Dell with Serial ATA drive (installing linux SATA)

Question

I know there are alot of angry folks at Dell for this Linux and SATA problem. Finally I have come up with a solution to getting linux installed on Dell 4600 's with serial ATA hard drives. I used Red Hat Enterprise WS 3.0 (Basic) bought it online for about $80 special deal. Although Fedora Red Hat should also work, just download it from a mirror site like rpmfind, cuz getting an ISO from Red Hat takes forever. And I don't think Red Hat 9 will work cuz it never detects a drive in the first place. Here are the steps: - go into the cra#*y Dell Bios (the one that they won't modify to allow different modes of operation on the SATA) - go into Drive Configuration, change Primary Master Drive from off to Auto (I know, even if you don't have an IDE drive in there you jabroni!) change ide udma from on to off exit BIOS and boot from red hat cd. - at reboot it will come up and complain that there is no primary IDE hard drive, just hit F1 to continue - at setup prompt type: linux apm=off - Install should go thru, change bios settings later to turn off Primary Master Drive so you don't get the error on boot up. - if you autopartition and try to use up the entire fat disk and setup locks during formatting, try manually partitioning and lower the size of / to about 15 GB Here are the Specs I'm using: Dell Dimension 4600 with the ICH5 rev2 chip set serial ata drive Now, users action nedded: everyone out there that posted a help message needs to call dell support and pressure them to modify the Bios to allow linux to see the hard drive. The key is the more people that bug Dell the better support we will get on these linux issues. There must be thousands of users out there with this problem from the all the messages I went thru. I like Microsoft products very much, but I can't control what I have to support, and it is a crime to be heavily in partnerships with Intel and Microsoft and not support another major OS in every Dell product line. Can't you see why they are not making it easy to use Linux on their systems, it's almost like they are going out of their way. That crooked letter in the Dell sign may really have some kind of meaning

Kuwala · Answer

I recently purchased a Dell 4600. I repartitioned the optional 80gb hard drive to leave about 26gb for Linux. I was able to successfully install Linux and the grub boot loader without any problems. My bios was running A09 (if that helps). I did not try to install Linux on a drive that didn't already contain Windoze. It would be nice to have a half way decent video driver for the intel chip for Linux. ( If you're lucky enough to have the NVidia video there is a great unified video driver on NVidia's website that works well... Even with a laptops!)

Do you have a dvd and cdrom on this system too?

Kuwala · Answer

I haven't had any NIC issues. However, the NIC in my system is an on-board model. 3coms work well. I have experienced issues with obscure and/or newmodels though.

kukitron · Answer

Is your ethernet card working?, mine is detected but I can't get on the internet.

skyphix · Answer

I realize this is an old topic and I am sorry for bringing it back to life.

I recently recided to put Tao Linux on my 4600i after my Windows XP Install died and I could not get Windows 2000 Installed.

Ive been using linux for ~5 years but never with an SATA Drive.

I followed the instructions in this topic and not only was the install deathly slow, it never finished... which was not a fault of the computer, it was my CD's, but regardless, it would've taken 13(!) hours to complete.

Is there a BIOS update I can get to make this easier? I really don't want to purchase RBEL3. Has anyone managed to do this with any other distributions outside of the enterprise class OS's? Or even within?

Other projects, like Whitebox Enterprise and Tao are just re-packaged RBEL's, so I would assume that they would work if they use the release 2 SRPM's to build them?

What am I doing wrong?

Kuwala · Answer

My Dell 4600 has the sata drive. I didn't have a problem installing Suse 9.1 Personal Redhat AS3 or Redhat 9.0. 13.+ hours is 486 slow! Sounds like you're having another problem. Especially if multiple OS types don't install. My configuration is a dvd, cdrw, 80 gb dd. It seems to prefer booting from the dvd as it is the primary. My bios is the A09 version on my Dell.

jdoitto · Answer

I am so confused. Kuwala, in particular as you've successfully loaded RH9 on a 4600 I wanted to ask you, as I've read that RH9 does not support SATA. I thought that I had an ATA not SATA drive using Ultra-ATA controllers (WDC WD1600JD-75HBB0). When I tried to load RH8.0, it found the drive and listed it as an ATA drive on ide2, but then fails to boot. I tried RH9 and got the "No hard drive found" error that is described by many for SATA drives. In the BIOS (A09) the WDC is listed as the SATA Primary Drive?? That would explain my problems but why does RH8.0 find an ide drive? We thought we bought an ide drive...

jdoitto

jdoitto · Answer

The WD1600JD-75HBB0 is definitely a SATA drive.  So my question is just, Kuwala, what method did you use to get RH9 to install with SATA?  Did the procedure above work for you? jdoitto

Kuwala · Answer

I only enabled booting from cdrom for the install and booted from the RH9 CDs. I don't pay specific attention to the hardware info for the drive. I'll do a reinstall this evening and take notes. It is interesting that RH8 thinks the drive is IDE. Either way..... I'll do some testing this evening and get back tomorrow with more information.

Pascal Robert · Answer

Any chances to get it working with Entreprise Linux 2.1 instead of 3 ?

Kuwala · Answer

I've had it work for AS2.1 & AS3. I must correct an earlier statement that I made about my configuration. My hard drive is using IDE and not the SATA. The hard drive is not plugged into the SATA connection on the motherboard.

Linux General

Was this post helpful?