Greetings.  One of the guys I work with has been getting a lot of grief 
lately, trying to install and upgrade Scientific Linux (versions 3 and 
4) on computers that include SATA drives and/or some kind of built-in 
RAID capability.  I've appended a copy of his recent note to me, 
requesting help.

I realize that this is a little vague, but I wonder if others in the SL 
community have experienced any similar problems.  We've generally had 
very little trouble with SL on older hardware.

Thanks.

					- Mike

I've successfully installed SL 3.0.3 on [the Professor's] new Dell 
Optiplex GX 620. The installation works when I disable the SATA drives 
by changing the SATA BIOS settings to accommodate the legacy hardware 
such as PATA drives ("combination" mode).  I can install SL 3.0.3 which 
does work with the vanilla kernel (2.4.20-21.EL, I think).  When I 
update the kernel (kernel-2.4.21-32.0.1.EL), the system will get a 
"kernel panic" upon the next reboot.  I believe this has a lot to do 
with the SATA drives.

I've run mkinit to try and load the modules into a new initrd for the 
new kernel--no success.

Installing SL 4.0 was troublesome, too.  I was unable to install SL 4.0 
in graphical mode, so I switched to text mode.  I was able to install
SL 4.0 using the text mode, but once the system finished the 
installation and rebooted, it would crash when starting in graphical 
mode (inittab = 5).  I didn't proceed any further after it crashed.

The problem with updated kernels and SATA drives exists in at least one 
other system.  I can think of only one system: [a researcher's] new Dell
Precision 370.  [The researcher's] system will be reinstalled this week 
(to remove the RAID setup).  The system boots normally with the original 
kernel(2.4.20-21.EL), but it will generate a kernel panic with the 
updated kernels.


-- 
Michael Hannon            mailto:[log in to unmask]
Dept. of Physics          530.752.4966
University of California  530.752.4717 FAX
Davis, CA 95616-8677