Re: DMA errors on SATA drive in Gentoo 2004.0 using VT8237 chipset

From: Rod Smith (rodsmith_at_nessus.rodsbooks.com)
Date: 04/26/04 

Date: Sun, 25 Apr 2004 20:35:13 -0400

In article <qmBic.1024$p72.733@nurse.blueyonder.net>,
        Darkinnit <dislashdot@yahoo.co.uk> writes:
>
> I'm trying to setup a Western Digital 120G SATA drive as my boot drive
> on the Abit KV8-MAX3. The Sata drives are controlled by a VIA VT8237
> chipset.

I've got an MSI K8T Neo-FSR, which also uses the VIA VT8237, and a Maxtor
80GB SATA drive.

> All goes well booting from the Gentoo 2004.0 minimal CD and lsmod shows
> sata_sil, sata_via, and libata as active modules. My SATA drive shows up
> at /dev/hde.

OK, something odd is going on here. There are two drivers for the VIA
VT8237's SATA support:

1) A driver activated in the ATA section of the kernel configuration (the
   VIA82CXXX driver). This is the ATA driver.
2) A driver activated in the SCSI section of the kernel configuration (the
   SATA_VIA driver). This is the libata driver.

Driver #2 makes the drive appear as a SCSI device -- probably /dev/sda for
the first SATA drive, unless you've got real SCSI disks, too. Thus, if the
sata_via driver is showing up in lsmod, that suggests that the system is
using the libata driver rather than the ATA driver; but if that's the
case, the drive should NOT appear as /dev/hde. Furthermore, unless you've
got multiple SATA drives, there's no reason to load an sata_sil driver
(which is for a Silicon Image controller; I suspect your motherboard uses
that for the 3rd through 6th SATA ports on the motherboard).

My hunch is that the system has loaded the ATA driver, which has "grabbed"
the device, but that the kernel and/or module utilities then got
overzealous and loaded the libata drivers for both the Silicon Image and
VIA controllers on top of that, causing the hardware to be driven by two
drivers -- not a good situation. Try unloading the libata drivers
(sata_sil, sata_via, and libata). If that fails, you may be able to burn a
fresh CD-R with those modules missing, just to force matters; or try
installing from some other boot system. When it comes time to build your
Gentoo kernel, be sure to completely omit whichever drivers you're not
using, just to be safe. Either the ATA or the libata drivers should work.

Another option would be to move the SATA drive to another SATA port -- one
controlled by the Silicon Image controller. There are also ATA and libata
drivers for it, but it's conceivable that this conflict situation wouldn't
arise if you use the Silicon Image controller. OTOH, this might complicate
installation in other ways and cause problems for your existing Windows
installation. 

-- 
Rod Smith, rodsmith@rodsbooks.com
http://www.rodsbooks.com
Author of books on Linux, FreeBSD, and networking

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