[ale] How to put HPT372 module into the kernel at boot properly?

[Joseph A. Knapka]

Dow Hurst wrote:
> 
> I'd like to finish my Gentoo install but have run into a problem.  I
> need to have the kernel understand my HPT372 builtin to the motherboard
> controller for the two disks I have on the two disk controllers that the
> HPT372 runs.  Currently when I boot with the initial installation CD, I
> have /dev/hde and /dev/hdg available.  /dev/hda is the DVD drive.  The
> Abit MB has IDE 1 and 2 as normal controllers and IDE 3 and 4 as the
> Raid controllers under the HPT372 chips control.
> 
> I've downloade the HPT372 source and compiled it successfully, but need
> to know how to make it part of the kernel or available to the kernel
> immediately on boot.  I know the Reiserfs module is inserted via initrd
> under SuSE.  What do I do with Gentoo?  Grub acted strange by treating
> my /dev/hde and /dev/hdg as not existing and would recognize somehow a
> /dev/hda.  Bizarre with that.
> 
> Anyway, what would be the best way to approach this?  I only have the
> two matched disks in the machine.  I could put an additional drive, an
> old 2Gb, on the IDE1 controller as /dev/hda.  Switch the DVD drive to
> /dev/hdb and just load the HPT372 as a module after initial boot.

That is probably what you'll need to do.

GRUB can only boot a kernel that lives on a disk that can
be accessed by the BIOS at boot time. If your HPT372
controller has a boot BIOS, that might be OK, but you'd
need to figure out the right drive to tell GRUB to boot
from.

Linux can only mount a root filesystem that's on a disk
for which drivers are built into the kernel - modules
won't work for this, because if the module lives on
a disk for which the module is needed, there's no
way to initially load the module.

So the upshot is, if you can

(a) build the HPT372 driver into the kernel, rather
than as a module, AND

(b) GRUB can see those disks at boot time via the
BIOS,

then you have some hope. It's probably easier to
install an IDE dirve to be your / partition,
and load the kernel off of that.

-- Joe
  "I'd rather chew my leg off than maintain Java code, which
   sucks, 'cause I have a lot of Java code to maintain and
   the leg surgery is starting to get expensive." - Me

---
This message has been sent through the ALE general discussion list.
See http://www.ale.org/mailing-lists.shtml for more info. Problems should be 
sent to listmaster at ale dot org.