AHCI driver for ICH6M

AHCI driver for ICH6M

[Michael Spiegle]

Hello Jeff,
I was trying to use the AHCI driver included in kernel 2.6.15 to drive
the SATA controller on my Asus Z71V laptop which supposedly has an ICH6M
controller.  I noticed that the PCI ID of my controller shows up in the
AHCI source code, so I assume that means I should have support.  I'm not
terribly good with linux or C, but I think I was able to troubleshoot my
issue down to a specific line of code.  Ultimately, I get the error:

ahci: probe of 0000:00:1f.2 failed with error -12

in my dmesg output.  I was trying to debug the AHCI driver code by
inserting print statements.  I found that the driver stops processing at
this point in the code:

ahci.c:
mmio_base = pci_iomap(pdev, AHCI_PCI_BAR, 0);

Specifically, the pci_iomap function seems to check for
pci_resource_start and pci_resource_len which both return false.
Looking at the code, if either len or start is false, the code returns
NULL, then I get the error observed above in dmesg.

Is this a possible bug, or is AHCI support somehow stripped from my
chipset?

Thank you for your time.  If this is not the proper way to contact you
about issues regarding the driver, I am sorry.  I am very new to these
things.

Michael Spiegle
mike@nauticaltech.com

Re: AHCI driver for ICH6M

[Erik Slagter]

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> I was trying to use the AHCI driver included in kernel 2.6.15 to drive
> the SATA controller on my Asus Z71V laptop which supposedly has an ICH6M
> controller.  I noticed that the PCI ID of my controller shows up in the
> AHCI source code, so I assume that means I should have support.  I'm not
> terribly good with linux or C, but I think I was able to troubleshoot my
> issue down to a specific line of code.  Ultimately, I get the error:
> 
> ahci: probe of 0000:00:1f.2 failed with error -12

A very familiar problem. It means that your bios configures your ICH
chipset for legacy (or whatever name it has) mode, which means it will
respond to the old-fashioned IDE ports and IRQs. This also means you
cannot drive it in AHCI mode :-( unless there is an option in your BIOS
to switch between legacy and ahci mode, but afaik no single laptop has
this option. So you're on your own here :-( (just like me, btw).

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Re: AHCI driver for ICH6M

[Dominic ES. Ijichi]

----- Erik Slagter <erik@slagter.name> wrote:
> > I was trying to use the AHCI driver included in kernel 2.6.15 to
> drive
> > the SATA controller on my Asus Z71V laptop which supposedly has an
> ICH6M
> > controller.  I noticed that the PCI ID of my controller shows up in
> the
> > AHCI source code, so I assume that means I should have support.  I'm
> not
> > terribly good with linux or C, but I think I was able to
> troubleshoot my
> > issue down to a specific line of code.  Ultimately, I get the
> error:
> > 
> > ahci: probe of 0000:00:1f.2 failed with error -12
> 
> A very familiar problem. It means that your bios configures your ICH
> chipset for legacy (or whatever name it has) mode, which means it
> will
> respond to the old-fashioned IDE ports and IRQs. This also means you
> cannot drive it in AHCI mode :-( unless there is an option in your
> BIOS
> to switch between legacy and ahci mode, but afaik no single laptop
> has
> this option. So you're on your own here :-( (just like me, btw).

i had same problem - fujitsu laptop with ich6 sata controller but with pata disk putting it into 'legacy/ide' mode.  ahci module would drive the controller/disk but suspend didn't work.  removing ahci module and adding ata_piix module resolved this issue for me, now i get full s3 suspend as well :)  device naming stays the same so you might just get away with removing ahci module and redoing mkinitrd.

dom

Re: AHCI driver for ICH6M

[Michael Spiegle]

On Wed, 2006-02-01 at 12:29 +0100, Erik Slagter wrote:
> > I was trying to use the AHCI driver included in kernel 2.6.15 to drive
> > the SATA controller on my Asus Z71V laptop which supposedly has an ICH6M
> > controller.  I noticed that the PCI ID of my controller shows up in the
> > AHCI source code, so I assume that means I should have support.  I'm not
> > terribly good with linux or C, but I think I was able to troubleshoot my
> > issue down to a specific line of code.  Ultimately, I get the error:
> > 
> > ahci: probe of 0000:00:1f.2 failed with error -12
> 
> A very familiar problem. It means that your bios configures your ICH
> chipset for legacy (or whatever name it has) mode, which means it will
> respond to the old-fashioned IDE ports and IRQs. This also means you
> cannot drive it in AHCI mode :-( unless there is an option in your BIOS
> to switch between legacy and ahci mode, but afaik no single laptop has
> this option. So you're on your own here :-( (just like me, btw).

thank you for your reply!  Looks like i'll need to wait for my laptop
manufacturer to realize this is an important feature.... or load up my
hex editor =)