Re: New Intel Sata Controller (ICH9 family) Support in Xen 3.1

[Kurt Hackel <kurt.hackel@oracle.com>]

Hi,

On Sat, Jan 05, 2008 at 09:29:37PM +0000, Mark Williamson wrote:
> > I got new Intel VT enabled hardware recently. As i am installing XEN
> > 3.1 over it gives me dom0 booting issues. After i solved lot many
> > issue i got stuck up with error saying "Begin: waiting for root
> > filesystem"
> >
> > I have downloaded the vanilla Linux 2.6.18 and installed the same. It
> > is also stucking with same error "waiting for root filesystem".  How
> > ever Linux 2.6.22 booting perfectly. So the conclusion says there is
> > some driver issue which is not supported by Linux 2.6.18.
> >
> > After Some investigation i found that the New SATA controller by Intel
> > is not support in Linux 2.6.18, Hence XEN is also stucking with it.
> > Since i need to enable the xen over this machine , so is there any
> > work around for the same problem in XEN 3.1 (other then back porting
> > the relevant driver)
> 
> I guess another option would be to temporarily stick a compatible SATA card 
> into the machine but I understand that wouldn't be ideal!
> 
> If you were to use a Linux distro with Xen included then they have often 
> forward ported Xen support to newer kernels.  Fedora and OpenSUSE do this, 
> for instance.  Also RHEL / CentOS contain backported drivers from newer 
> kernels, so it's possible that one of them would work on your system.  Ubuntu 
> contains Xen-enabled kernels newer than 2.6.18 also, but I've heard varying 
> things about the quality of Ubuntu's own Xen packages - though I haven't 
> tried them myself.

If you go to http://edelivery.oracle.com/linux and pull down the source
cd for Oracle VM Server, you should find a pair of patches in the kernel
srpm that are exactly what you need to apply.  One is something like
"intel-e1000" and the other "intel-ich9".  Should apply cleanly.  The
distro is free to use if you'd rather do that.

Thanks
kurt

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