Is this libata thing relevant in this case ? [SOLVED]

[mounty1]

Slowly but surely Gentoo on my PowerMac dual G5 is coming to life. One remaining problem is that the disk block devices are not created; that is, there are no /dev/sda* devices. Strangely, this does not stop the kernel from booting. During booting, it announces that it is remounting root read/write and just carries on. fsck.ext3 complains that it can't find the superblock, but that's all.

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...
0001:05:0c.0 IDE interface: Broadcom K2 SATA

and CONFIG_SATA_SVW is enabled. So what else is needed to get block devices working ? .config posted at http://www.pastebin.org/273114

[sebaro]

As I can see you have the old IDE/ATA enabled also in kernel. Disable all IDE/ATA and use only libata.

[mounty1]

Sorry to be a bit dim but how, exactly, do I use libata ? In particular, I've greped ATA in /proc/config.gz from the installation CD and compared that output with grep ATA .config and barring some new supported hardware in the newer kernel, the two are the same. I presume that libata is actually a boot time loadable driver but I can't see how to make it be created.

(later)
I've found libata.o and nmed it. It contains symbols such as sata_pmp_scr_read and sata_scr_read which also appear in the built kernel, so it seems that libata.o is being included in the kernel --- but there are still no /dev/sda* devices.

(still later)
If I mknod /dev/sda7 b 8 7 it works --- I can mount the device and look at the files on it.

[sebaro]

but there are still no /dev/sda* devices.

Aren't there /dev/hdX devices?

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CONFIG_IDE=y

Means you have old IDE/ATA support in kernel, which is loaded at boot.

For libata you need only

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CONFIG_ATA=y

You have to remove all IDE support from kernel config, by hand or you can use "make menuconfig" and disable "ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL Support".

[mounty1]

No devices are created automatically but if I issue mknod /dev/sda7 b 8 7 for example, the device is created and can be mounted and read correctly. So it seems that the problem is the population of the /dev tree, not the inclusion of the driver software in the kernel.

I've now got CONFIG_IDE not set and CONFIG_ATA=Y so the kernel is a 'pure' libata link. The first attempt led to a panic on boot because it couldn't mount the root device but it seems it is necessary to have CONFIG_ATA_GENERIC=Y as well as CONFIG_SATA_SVW=Y (for the Broadcom K2 chipset that lspci reports). I'm not sure why that is the case. Still no /dev/hda* or /dev/sda* devices created automatically though; but I can mknod them as described above.

sysfs is mounted on /sys type tmpfs so it's not that.

Package sys-apps/makedev is not installed --- is that significant ?

[mounty1]

Hello, I'm trying to set up Gentoo on an Apple Powermac dual G5 and while it is bootable and running, there are some problems. One is that for some reason, the disk devices are not configured in /dev. That is, while /dev contains fb0, ttynn etc., it does not contain the expected sda1, sda2 etc. for the SATA HD. As far as I can tell, only the sda devices are missing. There are entries under /sys such as /sys/block/sda/sda1. Also, I can mknod /dev/sda5 b 8 5 for example and the device is mountable and useable as normal. So it seems that for some reason, udev is not creating the HD nodes. Can anyone suggest why ? The minimal installation CD does create the nodes but I can't see what is the crucial difference between the installation setup and the installed setup.

[d2_racing]

Did you try SystemRescueCD ?

If so, is it working ?

[mounty1]

No, I don't know what the system rescue CD is; but as I said, the installation CD does create the /dev/sda* nodes correctly, so another Linux boot CD doesn't really prove anything. The problem is that the nodes are not created, even though support for them is in my kernel, as shown by the fact that I can create the nodes manually.

[sebaro]

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-827884.html
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-824447.html

Try other versions of udev.

[krinn]

#CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED=y
#CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED_V2=y

disable this so udev could work properly

[mounty1]

#CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED=y
#CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED_V2=y

disable this so udev could work properly

That was it ! Now fully sdaed ! Thanks also to sebaro who was very patient --- like him, I was looking at blaming udev, especially as a kernel made with make g5_defconfig suffered from the sda problem, so I never thought to look at kernel configuration.

Now if I can only get the screens working (http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-829330.html) I'll have a very nice desktop system.

[Mike Hunt]

Sounds like udev, do you have it in boot for the old way to boot and in sysinit for openrc?

[mounty1]

Sounds like udev, do you have it in boot for the old way to boot and in sysinit for openrc?

I thought so too, but actually it wasn't. http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-829329.htmlSorry to waste your time but I thought the other thread had died but suddenly it revived.

[tomk]

Merged from [post=6293449]here[/post].