Kernels(>2.6.13) dont recognize sata disk on K8N4-E [solved]

punkid · the dmesg output (running on my gentoo system with kernel 2.6.13)

Solved: Finally i found the solution from Bugzilla, to cut the crap, disable the CONFIG_PCI_GOMMCONFIG in kernel, and enable either CONFIG_PCI_GOBIOS or CONFIG_PCI_GODIRECT instead to boot the newer kernel.

For the LiveCD part, just boot with nommconf parameter

Bug 194531 : http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=194531

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I've been getting annoyed with this problem for a long long time, even i ever tried to ask for help in this forums, and checked every related thread, but still no luck, and no one really ever solved it so far. So now i re-post a new thread, hoping someone or even the gentoo dev team see this and help me out.

For saving your time, let me first illustrate my prob briefly. I have an ASUS K8N4-4 nForce4 mainboard, and a 160G Maxtor SATA harddisk (6V160E0). But all of the kernels (>2.6.13) couldnt recognize my harddisk, it showed the VFS: Cannot open root device "sda9" or unknown-block(0,0) error when booting. I tried gentoo-sources, genkernel, vanilla-kernel,mm-sources and even sabayon-sources, they all failed. However, the kernels <=2.6.13 work well. I know you might tell me to have a look at my kernel config, check twice that had i enabled the SATA device support, I really did it, you can take a look at my kernel config in this thread.

I tried the K8N4-E keywords in this forums, i found there were many guys who use that mainboard suffering the same prob. Such as:

SATA drives not recognized on kernel > 2.6.11

Problem finding my SATA-drives

What does "VFS: Cannot open root device..." mean, exactly?

Tips & Tricks

in the 2nd one, someone named addeman also confirmed this weird prob, and no one really gave a solution.

Recently I had a chance to try Kubuntu 7.04 feisty LiveCD, i found it could recognize my SATA harddisk with kernel-2.6.20, it makes me wondering is it a prob of the kernel itself or the gentoo system. So i downloaded Fedora 7 LiveCD (kernel-2.6.21), it can also recognize my sata device! Then i decided to have a test on Fedora 7 LiveCD's kernel by a dirty way, i copyed the vmlinuz image,the modules and the modprobe.conf setting into my gentoo system, try to boot from Fedora's kernel, it failed with the same VFS: Cannot open root device "sda9" or unknown-block(0,0) error.

Okay, now let me tell you my gentoo setting. Here's my partition list.

voltaic · n00b Joined: 14 Jun 2006 Posts: 44

i am running an nvidia chipset (i beleive it's the same one) and to be able to boot from a sata disk, i had to build the following into the kernel:
Device Drivers --->
Serial ATA (prod) and Parallel ATA (experimental) drivers --->
NVIDIA SATA support

if you don't need to boot from sata you can choose to build it into the kernel or as a module.
hope this helps
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punkid · Posted: Thu Sep 13, 2007 4:36 am Post subject:

you see. i've already had these built-in support

punkid · Posted: Fri Sep 14, 2007 12:57 pm Post subject:

no one give me a clue?
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mpagano · Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 11:22 am Post subject:

Your .config indicates both IDE and new ATA drivers being used. Please refer to this bug and try the suggestion in comment 12.

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=184825

punkid · Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 12:55 pm Post subject:

so i disabled the whole IDE config, and use libata instead, but it still appears the same error output. here's my new config

albright · Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 5:01 pm Post subject:

is it possible to get the /dev/config.gz file when you have
kubuntu running and compare it to you gentoo kernel
config? Might reveal something ...
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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Thu Sep 20, 2007 7:05 pm Post subject:

punkid,

There have been so many changes between 2.6.12 and 2.6.22 that there is little point in comparing configs.
With such an old kernel, what is the rest of the system like?

In particular, we need to know about udev. At kernel 2.6.12, you had a choice to use devfs or udev. At 2.6.13 devfs was removed and coldplug and udev became compulsory unless you wanted to have a fully static /dev. Thats only routinely used on embedded systems. Then udev grew up and displaced coldplug. More recently, udev is started by the kernel very early in the boot process to create all your /dev nodes, including the ones needed to mount your filesystems. It can do this because thr root=/dev/ tells the kernel where to find root, so it can load udev.

However, this means you need to be using udev and not devfs. Are you?
Under kernel 2.6.12 the choice was yours.
You need a recent udev too, you will not be able to boot.
To add to the interest many of the init scripts changed to keep pace, so your need a recent baselayout.
In short, you can't put 2.6.22 into a system that was current when 2.6.12 was the current kernel, it won't go. It should boot but in a very broken way.

Your unknown-bock (0,0) error means the kernel cannot communicate with the hard drive at all. You need four things compiled into the kernel to get rid of that missage.

MSDOS Partition Table Support ... you have that, its difficult to turn off.
SCSI and SCSI Disk Support ... thats the high level SCSI Code for all SCSI and SATA disks
Low level SATA support for your chipset ... looks like nVidia SATA for you.
Lastly, you need support for your root filesystem.
In addition, IDE SATA must be off.

filesystem support us not the problem, the boot process didn't get that far or you would bave different numbers in the unknown-block (x,y) message.

Do you have any hard drive option settings in your BIOS ?
Some systems allowed SATA to be 'translated' to IDE, or set to be AHCI compatible.
Sight of your lspic output would be useful too.
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Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

punkid · Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 4:34 am Post subject:

@ albright :I tried this way before, but unfortunately both Kubuntu and Fedora dont have the config.gz file. But i checked the devices under Fedora, my cdrom is recognized as cdrom_sr0, obviously it uses libata instead of the old IDE drivers.

@ NeddySeagoon : So you mean maybe something is wrong or fails with the udev ? Before i boot the new kernel, i upgraded udev to the latest version. Baselayout is also the latest stable version, i did an emerge -uvDN system three days ago.

according to your kernel compilation suggestion, i double checked my config, i'm sure that i have those with built-in supported. IDE SATA has also been off since i configured my kernel the first time

Hmm, i dont quite get it about the hard drive option setting in my BIOS. In my BIOS, i can set the primary, secondary,third and fourth sata devices, and my only sata device is the Maxtor harddisk. My cdrom is IDE device.

here's my lspci output

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 2:51 pm Post subject:

punkid,

Try adding

punkid · Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 3:31 pm Post subject:

still fails

here's the lspci -n output

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 4:19 pm Post subject:

punkid,

You could try the AHCI drive in place of the sata_nv driver.
I have a feeling that the CK804 chip is too old for that but I'm running out of ideas.

Its clearly not an issue affecting many users or it would be all over the net and its not.
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NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

punkid · Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 3:06 am Post subject:

The ACHI driver doesnt work, either

It's not affecting many users but the gentoo users who own this motherboard AFAIK. I'm not a Guru in Linux, so i have no idea finding out the difference b/w the Kubuntu and Gentoo which cause the failure in Gentoo but succeed in recognizing my harddisk in Kubuntu.
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Monkeh · Veteran Joined: 06 Aug 2005 Posts: 1656 Location: England

Have you tried different SATA ports?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 9:20 am Post subject:

punkid,

Well, all distros use the same SATA drivers from the kernel, so that shows its a config option.
In other words, its not a code problem, so there is hope for you yet.

Oh ... I'm downloading kubuntu-7.04 to have a look at their kernel settings.
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NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

punkid · Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 10:12 am Post subject:

@ Monkeh: As you suggested, i tried the three other ports, no luck

@ NeddySeagoon : Yep, i ever diffed the ata driver section b/w ubuntu sources and vanilla-sources, they're exactly same. So i believe it's not the problem of the kernel itself.
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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 10:32 am Post subject:

punkid,

humor me for a few moments ...

Try telling the kernel you drive is IDE. Use

punkid · Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 11:25 am Post subject:

NeddySeagoon,

I tried from a to the i, the output is the same, still unknown-block(0,0)

punkid · Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 11:32 am Post subject:

Ooh, forget what i said, changing root (hd0,7) definitely wont work.
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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 11:45 am Post subject:

punkid,

It has to be a kernel issue of some sort.
grub as passed control to the kernel and the root file system is not mounted. The kernel is all thats in memory at this time.
If an initrd is in use, (you don't have one) its contents are available too
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NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

punkid · Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 12:17 pm Post subject:

You mean the kernel doesnt actually receive the root file system parameters grub passes? we know that grub is not the issue, cuz LiveCD doesnt succeed to recognize my harddisk, either.
I tried genkernel which had an initrd, but it didnt work, too.

So if it is the kernel's issue, then what's the point that the same kernel works under Fedora but not Gentoo. I tried Fedora's kernel sources package under Gentoo. Or maybe my kernel config still has some options set mistakenly.
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NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 12:43 pm Post subject:

punkid,

No, the boot sequence goes ...
The BIOS checks the hardware and reads the MBR (LBA=0) from the hard drive
The MBR uses the BIOS to load grub stage 1.5 from the sectors following the MBR.
grub stage 1.5 loads grub stage 2 from root (hdX,Y) as it was set up to do at grub install to MBR time
grub stage 2 shows you the splash screen and grub menu
You select a kernel
grub loads the kernel and passes the parameters to it
Optionally, grub loads the initrd, if there is one given.
Grub exits by jumping to the kernel start address.
The kernel decompresses, initialises things and reads its parameters
The kernel mounts root as given in root=/dev/

Only for you, this last step fails and we don't know why, yet
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

punkid · Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 1:39 pm Post subject:

NeddySeagoon, thx for your patient instruction, i learned a lot about the boot procedure.

So the kernel failed with mounting the root before get other things like udev work, right? I noticed something when i upgrade udev to the latest version (becuz the new one doesnt work with my old kernel), it says:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 1:45 pm Post subject:

punkid,

What does lsmod in the busybox shell show ?
genkernel gives you a fully modular kernel.
What SATA modules are in /lib/modules/....
You can try modprobing them all.

If proc is mounted and you can read /proc/interrupts, do you have PIC-XT or APIC in use ?

Can you get at dmesg from busybox ?
Any SATA related errors ?
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

punkid · Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 2:41 pm Post subject:

NeddySeagoon, i used genkernel --menuconfig all to make sure the kernel has sata drivers built-in support. So there's no sata modules appears in lsmod output.

Here's the output of cat /proc/interrupts