SATA Boot

[Mike Reinehr]

On Monday 08 May 2006 05:52 pm, Chong Yu Meng wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-05-08 at 11:33 -0500, Net Llama! wrote:
> > I'm not sure I understand your questions.
>
> Sorry! I had just taken my flu medication when I wrote that, so I was
> really woozy. (You Americans have something a lot more powerful--Nyquil,
> I believe it's called. Put me out like a light the one time I used it)
>
> I'm adding another server in Hong Kong, and because my budget is really
> tight this time round, I'm thinking of using SATA disks instead of SCSI.
> So I was wondering if there were any issues with using SATA instead of
> ATA or SCSI.
>
> Regards,
> pascal chong

Pascal,

It's my understanding that there is no such thing as generic SATA support. 
What is provided by various kernel modules (e.g., sata_nv.ko (nForce), 
sata_via.ko (Via boards), sata_mv.ko (Marvell SATA cards), sata_sil.ko 
(Silicon Image add-on chips) ) is support for various SATA controllers.

I run Debian 'Sarge' (which is based on a 2.6.8 kernel image) and the stock 
kernel does not include the saga_sil module to support my SI SATA controller, 
so it's not recognized. Later kernels such as the 2.6.12+ started supporting 
it.

So my recommendation is to, first, determine which SATA chip set your new 
server will be using, and, second, study the kernel documentation to see if 
it is supported "out of the box." If it isn't, then you may have to jump 
through some hoops to do your installation. A simple way is jsut to use a 
spare IDE drive to bootstrap the installation.

Cheers!

cmr


-- 
Debian 'Sarge': Registered Linux User #241964

"More laws, less justice." -- Marcus Tullius Ciceroca, 42 BC