Re: sata-nv and 790i

[Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>]

J.A. Magallón wrote:
> Hi all...
> 
> I recently put my hands on a system with an ASUS P5N64 WS Pro mobo:
> 
> http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=653&l4=0&model=2182&modelmenu=1
> 
> It has a nForce 790i Ultra SLI chipset, the part for the SATA controller
> is MCP55.
> 
> The problem is that linux seems to fail to read the hard drive on boot.
> I will explain.
> 
> I have tried to install both CentOS 5.2 and Mandriva 2009.0.
> For CentOS (has a 2.6.18 kernel), the install seems ok, but when I reboot
> into the just intalled system the kernel hangs just after printing
> the name of the initrd. Mandriva (2.6.27-rc8) just hungs half the install process.
> Live versions of both hang on boot saying they can not find the root
> device.
> 
> I have found some messages in the net about the MCP55 in that board not
> being completeley suppported as AHCI in sata_nv, and that some other
> boards work puttin the SATA controller in 'compatible' mode (with
> loss of performance).
> But I can't find any setting in the P5N64 to put SATA in Compat mode.
> 
> Can I do this via some kernel parameters ?
> Somabody has this board working ? Do current kernels have better support
> for this chipset ?

All three flavors of sata_nv's - generic (yours), nf2/3 and ck804 - had
various detection problems from 2.6.27-rc1.  The problem was that their
hardresets all worked differently.  2.6.27-rc1 started to favor
hardresets over softresets and exposed this problem.  While trying to
fix the problem, because all three flavors unexpectedly showed different
hardreset behaviors, there were some mistakes.  A proper fix is included
in upstream and is queued for -stable.  Sorry about the mess.

Thanks.

-- 
tejun