[TriLUG] Linux on SATA?

[James Brigman]

Wow...nothing will make you feel more like a n00b than falling on your
face at the beginning of the install process...and on a "sugar-
sweetened" distro like SuSE 9.x or RHEL/CentOS 4....

I'm having a problem getting Linux to install on a system with built-in
SATA RAID. The mbd. is that low-cost "Chaintech 7NJL6". It's an nVidia
nForce 2 board with the built-in MCPS controller system. The board has
two RAID-capable SATA connectors, which I want to use so I will get to
use the fantastic little SATA cables instead of the mongo PATA cables. 

The particular problem is that sata_nv driver won't "see" the drives on
the SATA interfaces, even though they are A-OK in the BIOS. 

If all else fails, I can fall back to plain old parallel-ATA, but that's
very yucky compared to getting to use the slick SATA cables. If I can
avoid going back to ATA133, that would be great. 

SuSE and CentOS try to install the "sata_nv" driver. There's a timing
bug, however, that's manifest in the kernels used by SuSE 9.2 and
CentOS4. Good description of the bug can be found here:
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html

I guess what made me feel better is that SATA problems are rampant in
the Linux community, apparently for lack of standards among hardware
manufacturers. I'm surprised by this: I thought mfr's had come a long
way from the days of incompatible IDE implementations. Apparently, they
haven't learned much from their own history. 

There's been some progress on this bug, found in Kernel 2.6.8.x as
outlined here:
http://bugme.osdl.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3352

The particular bug is with the ATA_FLAG_SATA_RESET: removing the
variable from the header of the driver is reported to solve the problem.

My questions to the group are:

1) Are there any magic incantations that could be typed at the
bootloader prompt such that bugs in the sata_nv driver could be
sidestepped? (SuSE 9.2/CentOS 4 x86) Or, similarly, anyone know anything
about getting a fixed sata_nv driver, dropping it on a floppy, and
booting with an amended driver?

2) Has anyone taste-tested SuSE 9.3 on SATA yet, an particularly, nVidia
SATA? Can anyone out there report success with SuSE 9.3 on built-in SATA
controller hardware?

3) Is anyone getting ANY distro to work with nVidia-based mbds with
SATA? Or with the Chaintech 7NJL6 working under ANY distro? This board
has been on sale at TigerDirect for some time, and costs $40 or less,
after rebate. So I figure someone in the local area has, at least, seen
this problem too. 

All experienced feedback welcome. Tangential comments not related to the
solution to /dev/null, please.

JKB