# [SOLVED] Missing sata drive on 2.6.13 + sii 3114

## lazx888

(similar post in nitro thread, but no response so I am posting here)

I am using a 2.6.13-nitro1 kernel...  have 2 sata drives (sda = root + home+ boot, sdb = storage + windows)

Using the sii3114 drivers for my sii3114 card...

sda is coming up fine (so I am assuming my .config is fine), but sdb doesn't show up... the drive is fine b/c I can boot windows off it and also RIP detects it...

In dmesg, there is no output for sdb being detected/failing/etc

Udev rules seem to be fine...

Here is some grub info: kernel (hd0,0)/boot/bzImage root=/dev/sda2 gentoo=nodevfs udev doscsi nousb usb-handoff

Tried just with: kernel (hd0,0)/boot/bzImage root=/dev/sda2 and this did not make a difference

Udev problem?  Sii 3114 driver problem?  ????

Thanks!

//Edit (11/13/05)

Disabling generic ide support did the trick!Last edited by lazx888 on Sun Nov 13, 2005 10:38 pm; edited 4 times in total

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## Crisis

You are giving kernel and boot info, does that mean "coming up" means your system will not even boot?

Or is it booting fine, but then no longer to see the second sata drive once you are in the linux environment?

If it's not even getting past the boot, it is possible that sda and sdb are actually switched.  I have seen this before, where the LiveCD recognized one drive as a and one drive as b, however after booting, they were switched due to udev.  This happened to me also with SATA drives on sil

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## lazx888

sorry, I'll clairify

The system is booting perfectly...  with the exception of no sdb being found...   for example, when I boot into gentoo, I get errors that /dev/sdb2 (storage partition) cannot be found, and the reason for that is that /dev/sdb is not present.

So, I have 2 sata drives (on the same controller), fdisk /dev/sda shows my root/home/boot partitions, fdisk /dev/sdb returns an error because there is no sdb node (I tried MAKEDEV and the node keeps on disappearing, on top of that, after MAKEDEV the /dev/sdb node that is created doesn't even link to my second sata drive - hence the reason why I leaning towards the problem being a driver one)...

sda and sdb are not being swapped either

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## Crisis

Hmm, I'm out of ideas then, other then the general flakines of the sil module.  I ended up getting rid of my sil card in linux, but others may have better advice.

Any chance these are Seagate drives?  They are known to have issues in linux with the sil module.

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## lazx888

nope, dual western digital raptors (37Gb)

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## lazx888

Either a recent emerge -uD world or starting dbus (rc-update add dbus default) at boot fixed the problem (well, at least thats what it appears to be)

edit//

nope, still not fixed - sporadic detection :-/

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## JackDog

I think this is something to do with kernel 2.6.13. I am seeing it with 2.6.13-mm see:

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?p=2785180#2785180

The 2005.1 boot cd saw and used the drives just fine, however my barracuda had atrocious performance on the bootcd - 14 MB/s. Where as with my custom kernel I get 55 MB/s. But I dont get to see my second SATA drive   :Crying or Very sad: 

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## Crisis

I hate to bring this back up, but from all my experiences with SATA in linux, I have seen nothing but problems with sata_sil based controllers.  I'm sure there are success stories, but in my experience they just aren't worth all the hassle right now, which is why I eventually got rid of my sil based cards and went with Promise TX4

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## lazx888

grrr bump

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## JackDog

Okay, I updated to 2.6.14 rc5 mm and both drives can be seen and more importantly, used. I dont remember the exact drive models but can find them if needed. 

```

YourMom ~ # hdparm -tT /dev/sda /dev/sdb

/dev/sda:

 Timing cached reads:   2924 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1462.50 MB/sec

 Timing buffered disk reads:  166 MB in  3.01 seconds =  55.07 MB/sec

/dev/sdb:

 Timing cached reads:   2976 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1488.05 MB/sec

 Timing buffered disk reads:  184 MB in  3.01 seconds =  61.13 MB/sec

```

I be happy. The problems I "had" with 2.6.13 are gone. Before, the second drive could not be seen and the machine would crash everyweek. Now things are stable and fast.

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## mejiro

I had a problem with SATA drives being seen by the kernel but not being usable (ie, fdisk didn't see them). The fix was to compile all the relevant SCSI drivers into the kernel, rather than as modules.

(Here's what I posted to the nForce4 thread:

I don't know if this an nForce4 specific problem, but with my nForce4 MSI Neo4, I initially wasn't able to use my 2 new Western Digital SATA drives. The drives were clearly being detected (according to dmesg), but /dev/sda wasn't even appearing (this is with kernel 2.6.13-gentoo-r5 and udev). Neither 2.6.14-gentoo nor 2.6.14-rc5-mm1 worked, either.

What finally worked was to compile all the relevant SCSI drivers into the kernel, rather than as modules, i.e.,

CONFIG_SCSI=y

CONFIG_SCSI_SATA=y

CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_AHCI=y

CONFIG_SCSI_SATA_NV=y

I didn't test all the combinations of these, but this worked.)

Jon

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## lazx888

Disabling generic ide support did the trick!

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## Crisis

That's interesting.  I wonder if it actually has something to do with the ide module, or if your kernel no longer recognizes your IDE controller, freeing up resources that may have been in conflict.

A lot of my sil_module problems in the past looked like they were from irq conflicts with other hardware on my system.

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