I have a SME Server 8 box that currently has 3 SATA harddrives, 2 of which are setup in the soft mirror config and a 3rd which upon installing and booting into SME shows up as /dev/hda.
Now let me go ahead and make clear of what I have done before anybody makes the quick easy assumptions as there are clearly common sense indicators that need to be looked at when running into this situation. Keep in mind that I do have 2 drives that are recognized as SATA, so the system does or is capable of recognizing sata drives.
1.) The BIOS has no option for AHCI. The Dell Vostro 260 is a fairly new machine that only has sata controllers and no ide. My guess is that it's AHCI by default and how I know this is that I have like 5 of these on my network and they install as ahci sata on everyone of them.
2.) There are no options for the storage controller in the BIOS, period, its all factory defaulted.
3.) Using hdparm I definitely confirmed that the speed between the sda and hda was a day and night difference thereby confirming that what is showing up is truly correct and not some fluke.
4.) Using the following command grep
-i SATA /boot/config-$(uname -r) reveals the following:
CONFIG_SATA_PMP=y
CONFIG_SATA_AHCI=m
CONFIG_SATA_SIL24=m
CONFIG_SATA_SVW=m
CONFIG_SATA_MV=m
CONFIG_SATA_NV=m
CONFIG_SATA_QSTOR=m
CONFIG_SATA_PROMISE=m
CONFIG_SATA_SX4=m
CONFIG_SATA_SIL=m
CONFIG_SATA_SIS=m
CONFIG_SATA_ULI=m
CONFIG_SATA_VIA=m
CONFIG_SATA_VITESSE=m
CONFIG_SATA_INIC162X=m
**The above data confirms the kernel is compiled for ahci.
5.) Running the following command
lsmod | egrep 'ata_piix|libata' ata_piix 24261 4
libata 157061 1 ata_piix
scsi_mod 144277 4 scsi_dh,sg,libata,sd_mod
6.) Running kudzu this the data for the 2 sata controllers:
-
class: IDE
bus: PCI
detached: 0
driver: ata_piix
desc: "Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family 2 port SATA IDE Controller"
vendorId: 8086
deviceId: 1c08
subVendorId: 1028
subDeviceId: 04ee
pciType: 1
pcidom: 0
pcibus: 0
pcidev: 1f
pcifn: 5
-
class: IDE
bus: PCI
detached: 0
driver: ata_piix
desc: "Intel Corporation 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family 4 port SATA IDE Controller"
vendorId: 8086
deviceId: 1c00
subVendorId: 1028
subDeviceId: 04ee
pciType: 1
pcidom: 0
pcibus: 0
pcidev: 1f
pcifn: 2
7.) I have even tried adding
hda=noprobe to my grub config and does not help
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/main/root
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/md1
hda=noprobe
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd1,0)/grub/smeserver.xpm.gz
foreground 000000
background 4E95D3
title SME Server (2.6.18-308.11.1.el5PAE)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-308.11.1.el5PAE ro root=/dev/main/root
initrd /initrd-2.6.18-308.11.1.el5PAE.img
title SME Server (2.6.18-308.4.1.el5PAE)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.18-308.4.1.el5PAE ro root=/dev/main/root
initrd /initrd-2.6.18-308.4.1.el5PAE.img
8.) I even tried switching the harddrive to a different controller that was utilized by another hard drive recognized as sata and this also did not work.
I am running out of options so if you have any information that could be helpful it would be very much appreciated.
Thanks.....