SATA in Red Hat 8.0

Question

I'm trying to install Red Hat 8.0 on a XPS with Serial ATA hard drives. Support for this isn't there until kernel 2.4.21, and Red Hat's installer uses an earlier one. So I don't have a HD.
I've seen someone say you can turn on ATA compatability mode in the BIOS, but the XPS bios setup is very bland, and I can't seem to find this. Is there a BIOS update that can include this?
Or is there a driver disk for whatever SATA controller chip the XPS uses (intel 875p chipset)?

Thanks

burgie996 · Answer

Hi, I have the same problem with an 8300..just a bunch of errors on the install and it does not see the hard drive..any chance that Dell can help out with this one?

ThomasB2 · Answer

Sorry I can't help you, but i have the same with a Dimension 8300 with only SATA drives and Suse Linux (a german distrib).
Installer claims there is no drive found to install to...

And their (suse's) support site doesn't reveal anything either

Thomas

atarimike · Answer

Ah, success. It seems as if Fedora Core-test 3 has support for the ICH5 SATA chipset, although not with SMP (so no hyperthreading).

Hata Beag · Answer

Core-test 3 ?

I looked as the download site, I could only find core test 1, and a roadmap for core test 2.

Do you mean

severn-i386-disc1.iso etc ?

Thanks,

Dave

"Ah, success. It seems as if Fedora Core-test 3 has support for the ICH5 SATA chipset, although not with SMP (so no hyperthreading). "

micah42 · Answer

This may be a little roundabout, but totally works.

I installed Redhat9 onto a PATA drive temporarily borrowed out of another computer. Once it was running, I compiled the 2.6.0test9 kernel (or even one of the later 2.4 kernels) with ICH5 SATA support, & rebooted with it. Once that was running, I mounted the SATA drive, copied the filesystem from the PATA drive to the SATA, installed LILO, and away we go.

Dern · Answer

Make sure there is no bootable partition on the SATA drisk (e.g. Windoze), otherwise
the BIOS seems to swap the disks which totally confuses Linux. I couldn't get Linux to
boot properly from the second disk when there was a bootable Windows partition on the
SATA disk.

If you don't have a spare disk around have a look at Knoppix
( http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-old-en.html ). The latest version uses the 2.4.22
kernel which has no problem with the SATA. It's a Linux distro that runs from CD but it
also offers the option to install on a harddisk. It's not Redhat based however, it's Debian
based.

Nico

Hata Beag · Answer

Also with Mandrake 9.2, I needed to buy the conexant soft modem drivers (approx $15) and compile these.

I BELIEVE that the correct nvidia drivers & softmodem drivers are included in the Mandrak set that you buy, as opposed to the download / magazine set.

HB

Hata Beag · Answer

Just a quick update, Mandrake 9.2 supported the SATA hard disk.

I had to download the new version of the bios A03 from dell.

Then there was fun with installing in text mode, getting the Kernel Source (no on the download CDs) comiling the Nvidia Drivers & then doing an upgrade with the 9.2 CDs to complete the installation & configuration.

Don't put in disk 3 the first time around.

I may try Fedora later, but for now Mandrake is up and running.

HB

Linux General

SATA in Red Hat 8.0

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