Re: PATA-disk named sda

[Gabriel C <nix.or.die@googlemail.com>]

Christoph Pleger wrote:
> Hello,
>   

Hi,

>   
>>> In the newest Ubuntu Release, my PATA-disk is called sda instead of
>>> hda. Is that a general feature in newer kernel versions or is it a
>>> special feature in Ubuntu?
>>>       
>> General. SATA and now PATA drives map onto the /dev/sd range as do
>> SCSI, USB etc
>>     
>
> It seems to be not that simple, at least not if both the old IDE
> interface and the new libata interface are enabled as modules: In my
> Ubuntu system, I created two kernel packages (from the same kernel
> source and with the same configuration) and installed them. Afterwards,
> I re-created the initial ramdisks, one with the Ubuntu feisty utilities
> and one with Debian etch utilities. So, I had the same kernel with
> different ramdisks. With the Ubuntu ramdisk, my harddrive was named sda,
> but with the Debian ramdisk, it was named hda.
>
> So, the name of the drive can depend on something which happens in the
> ramdisk environment. Does anybody know what that is? And is there a
> kernel command line parameter which restores the old behaviour?
>   

The boot options are different depending on the distribution you are using.
Every distribution has his own magic for this kind things. ( Debian and 
Ubuntu should have a man page with boot parameters )

On kernels with both IDE and PATA enabled as modules , depends on what 
you load first / include in your initramfs.
If you load the IDE subsystem first you get HD*'s while with PATA you 
get SD*'s.

I don't use Debian nor Ubuntu but it looks like Ubuntu has PATA as 
default while Debian has IDE.

> Regards
>   Christoph
>   

Gabriel