FIXED Re: [Techtalk] Upgrading machines with SATA drives to 2.6.8

[Mary]

On Sun, Dec 05, 2004, Mary wrote:
> Does anyone know either:
>  - which driver this SATA controller should use under 2.6.8/9;
>  - how I make sure that this driver is included in the initrd; or
>  - where I can find a reasonable guide to the SATA changes in 2.6.8 that
>    isn't along the lines of "yeah, it worked great for me" or "you're
>    using SATA? HAHAHAHA."?

OK, more than a month later I finally got this to work. The problem was
that when Debian installed the new kernel, it wasn't setting up the
initrd correctly to load the right driver for my hard drive (the SATA
drivers have changed between 2.6.3 and 2.6.8, so it couldn't work it out
from the running kernel). Here's what to do, in the unlikely event that
someone else is trying to do this:

 1. As per [1], edit /etc/mkinitrd/modules to contain a line with the
 name of the driver it should use for the drive containing the root
 partition.
 
 In the case of the Silicon Image controller there is a choice of
 drivers:

  - sata_sil, the libata driver that makes the drive behave like a scsi
    device.  I believe this is the preferred driver now.
  - siimage, the old driver that makes it behave like an ide device. I
    haven't actually tested this one in 2.6.8, although I was using it
    in 2.6.3

 2. Reinstall the kernel package (I believe this is just the easiest way
 of getting it to build a new initrd with the right module included).

 2a. If you went with sata_sil above, make sure you fix your bootloader
 to point at /dev/sdaX as the root partition rather than /dev/hdeX
 before rebooting

 3. Reboot into new kernel

I found this out after quite a bit of mucking around with initrds and
cramfs which I won't bother you with. I do hope I never need that arcane
knowledge again. :)

I believe the procedure is Debian specific, but hopefully other distros
take care of the problem more gracefully anyway.

-Mary

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2005/01/msg00342.html