Bug 148638

Summary: Devices on the PATA port of the Promise PDC2037x controller are not detected
Product: [openSUSE] SUSE Linux 10.1 Reporter: Andras Mantia <amantia>
Component: KernelAssignee: Jens Axboe <axboe>
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE QA Contact: E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity: Enhancement    
Priority: P5 - None CC: enosp.netmeeting
Version: RC 3   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: 64bit   
OS: SuSE Linux 10.0   
Whiteboard:
Found By: Customer Services Priority:
Business Priority: Blocker: ---
Marketing QA Status: --- IT Deployment: ---
Attachments: Enable the PATA port for Promise PDC2037x
Enable the PATA port for Promise PDC2037x (for 10.1 beta9)

Description Andras Mantia 2006-02-07 09:55:27 UTC
On some motherboards (like ASUS A8V Deluxe) there is a a parallel IDE port aside of the SATA ports for the Promise PDC2037x controller. The current driver in the kernel does not detect this devices. A search on google revealed that the patch might not be in the latest version of the kernel as well, but it is in the libata-dev tree. The attached patch is an adaptation of a Gentoo patch for kernel 2.6.11 (http://dev.gentoo.org/~dsd/genpatches/patches-2.6.12-13.htm, 4320_promise-pdc2037x.patch) to kernel 2.6.13-15.7 used in SuSE 10.0. 
As I write now the main hard disk I use is on this port and seems to work fine. Without such patch integrated in the kernel it is impossible to install SuSE on a hard disk that is attached to this port, requiring moving the hard disk to another port and after install back (and adjusting the boot parameters and the kernel arguments). The reason why one would want to have the main HDD on this port: the port does not support CD/DVD devices so in some cases in order to have the disk on a separate channel from an optical device, one must use the Promise port for the hard disk and the integrated ports for the other devices.
Comment 1 Andras Mantia 2006-02-07 09:56:42 UTC
Created attachment 66689 [details]
Enable the PATA port for Promise PDC2037x
Comment 2 Greg Kroah-Hartman 2006-02-09 22:37:45 UTC
Does the 10.1 Beta 3 work properly for you on this hardware?
Comment 3 Andras Mantia 2006-02-10 06:27:20 UTC
Due to the fact that my connection is till somewhat limited, I cannot promise that I can test before the final version. 
Is it enough for testing if I download the first CD only?
Comment 4 Greg Kroah-Hartman 2006-02-10 07:21:24 UTC
Yes, the mini-iso will probably be sufficient.  You might be able to just
grab the kernel package and see if that works (but don't loose the current one,
there are some userspace programs that need to be updated to make the new
kernel work properly.)
Comment 5 Andras Mantia 2006-02-10 08:14:01 UTC
The kernel on the mini-iso does not recognize the device attached to the PATA port, just like with the kernel from 10.0.
Comment 7 Jens Axboe 2006-02-23 09:01:57 UTC
Sorry, we wont add additions like this to a released product. I don't think the promise PATA bits are all in mainline yet, though there's a chance that the next 10.1 beta will have it because we needed it for something else.
Comment 8 Andras Mantia 2006-02-23 09:49:01 UTC
It would be prefect if the final 10.1 would support PATA devices, as it would make it possible to install SUSE without swapping around the disks, patching the kernel later and swap again. For 10.0, I'm happy with my patched kernel.
Comment 9 Andras Mantia 2006-03-10 20:21:53 UTC
I reopen because:
- the bug is not solved in beta6 (which is a not yet released product)
- other distributions solved it quite some time ago (like Ubuntu)

Unfortunately this means that I cannot test beta6 (altough I downloaded it) unless I put my hard drive to another port.
Comment 10 Andras Mantia 2006-03-18 15:49:20 UTC
Same with beta8. If you don't trust my patch, the original ones from Jeff Garzik are available at ftp://ftp.ro.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/jgarzik/libata . I tried with success with the suse's 2.6.13, vanilla 2.6.15 and 2.6.16-rc6 (here it did not apply clearly the patch against 2.6.16-rc1 as some parts were already in rc6). 
Is it really that hard to include this piece of code in the suse's version until it appears in the upstream kernel (where sooner than later will appear)?
Comment 11 Andras Mantia 2006-04-01 16:31:04 UTC
Created attachment 76046 [details]
Enable the PATA port for Promise PDC2037x (for 10.1 beta9)
Comment 12 Egon Niessner 2006-04-29 21:19:13 UTC
Also the newest boot.iso CD from SuSe10.1 RC3 can't find hard disks on the 
parallel IDE Port of the Promise FAST Track 376 on-board controller of
my A7V8X Asus motherboard.
I like to run this board with a 32 Bit linux kernel. 
In which SuSe10.1 Release will the libata patch mentioned above inserted ?
Since SuSe 9.0  I was not able to run with SuSe harddisks on this Motherboard.
Other Linux Distributions can do this since years.....

Regards 
Egon Niessner
Comment 13 Jens Axboe 2006-05-23 08:29:45 UTC

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 176249 ***