Michael,

On Mon, 18 Jul 2005, Michael Hannon wrote:

> 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.
> 

It would have been handy to know what SATA this user has.

> Thanks.
> 
> 					- Mike
> 
> I've successfully installed SL 3.0.3 on [the Professor's] new Dell 

You could try installing SL 3.0.4 instead of SL 3.0.3.  Or even better yet 
the SL 3.0.5(sl30rolling) as it already has the latest kernel.  This will 
move to "released" state really soon now(by the end of the week).  It 
already have the yum-conf for 305 and we really are not planning on making 
any changes to the "current" product.

> Optiplex GX 620. The installation w,orks 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.
> 

I think there is a hint there that if the installer did not work in X then 
the resulting system would work well with X either.

SL 4.0 has a different X than SL 30x.  Again what video hardware would be 
handy to know here.

There is a updated X with Update 1.  Since the video was not disclosed I 
cannot determine if Update 1 will help.
 
> 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.
> 
> 
> 

-Connie Sieh