Greetings All,
I recently upgraded the motherboard on my system. The SATA controller on this new MB is different than on the old one, and my currently installed SUSE 11.1 system can no longer find the disk.
Is there a way to update the SATA driver without having to re-install? I’m assuming that the controller IS supported,
as the SUSE installation disk has no problem running the repair tool.
The new board is a ASUS M4A79T with an AMD SB750 SATA chipset.
Thanx in advance.
Rich
richardrosa wrote:
> I recently upgraded the motherboard on my system. The SATA controller
> on this new MB is different than on the old one, and my currently
> installed SUSE 11.1 system can no longer find the disk.
What kind of error gives you? Something like “waiting for device… to
appears”?
> Is there a way to update the SATA driver without having to re-install?
> I’m assuming that the controller IS supported,
> as the SUSE installation disk has no problem running the repair tool.
>
> The new board is a ASUS M4A79T with an AMD SB750 SATA chipset.
Are the bios settings the same (SATA / AHCI / RAID) in both motherboards?
If opensuse was installed with “sata” set and the new board has activated
AHCI, “ahci” module is missing in the current kernel. BTW, this has an easy
by-pass…
Greetings,
–
Camaleón
Got the “waiting for device…” message. When it times out, and I can do a ls /dev/* command, no drives show up.
Motherboard bios is set for SATA (as was the old board).
Rich
richardrosa wrote:
> Got the “waiting for device…” message. When it times out, and I can
> do a ls /dev/* command, no drives show up.
It should be “ls /dev/disk/*”
> Motherboard bios is set for SATA (as was the old board).
Then I can guess 2 causes:
a) Grub messing up with attached devices (“menu.lst” pointing to wrong disks
or “device.map” sata port map changes)
b) A kernel module missing and needed to be load to properly detect the sata
controller… quite impossible because “libata” has support for any recent
sata disk controller.
Greetings,
–
Camaleón
do you have the install DVD for your version? if so, try in this step
of the install:
http://en.opensuse.org/INSTALL_Local#Installation
select to “Repair Installed System”
when that has run then see if you can boot from the hard drive…if
you can’t then boot from the install DVD again and when you get to
this step:
http://en.opensuse.org/INSTALL_Local#Step_3:_Installation_Mode
try “Repair Installed System”
maybe it works, maybe not…
–
palladium
Thanx, but this was the first thing I tried. Repair seems to mostly run fsck. I suspect there was some driver that was not initially installed or configured, but repair didn’t seem to figure that out.
I decided that the best solution was to re-install. Fortunately, Linux is a LOT easier to install than Windoze. Also, I have the home directory on a separate partition, so I didn’t have to redo my desktop settings. Whatever driver was needed was picked up correctly by the install process. Everything working as before.
I would still like to know if there is any way to get the correct driver installed and loaded WITHOUT reinstall. Although I don’t change motherboards daily, I typically may install a new one once or twice a year in various other machines. I’m sure this problem will arise at another time.
Thanx again.
Rich
> Thanx, but this was the first thing I tried. Repair seems to mostly
> run fsck.
well, the second one i cited if using the install DVD (not live cd)
does a heck of a lot more than run fsck disk…
did you try that one??
> I would still like to know if there is any way to get the correct
> driver installed and loaded WITHOUT reinstall.
i’m pretty close to 100% sure the solution i gave you WILL both detect
the hardware change AND install the correct drivers…and will often
repair even the broken bits put in by the impatient user…
–
palladium
richardrosa wrote:
> I would still like to know if there is any way to get the correct
> driver installed and loaded WITHOUT reinstall. Although I don’t change
> motherboards daily, I typically may install a new one once or twice a
> year in various other machines. I’m sure this problem will arise at
> another time.
Any kernel module outside “libata” should be listed
under /etc/sysconfig/kernel:
hpc02@stthpc:~> cat /etc/sysconfig/kernel | grep INITRD
INITRD_MODULES=“processor thermal ata_piix ahci fan reiserfs edd”
Look, I’m loading “ahci” due to my bios is configured to use ahci instead
sata.
Once the system is installed, any “new” module to load should be listed
here, and then issue the command “mkinitrd” to recreate the initrd disk
image.
Greetings,
–
Camaleón
This looks like the key. However, running mkinitrd assumes that the system I am updating is already up and running…
The MAN pages for mkinitrd shows a set of steps for creating an initrd from a mounted root system, so it looks like I can also do this from some stand-alone disk (like knoppix). Now all I have to do is figure out what new drivers have to be added.
Thanx for pointing me in the right direction!
Rich