Re: [gentoo-desktop] System problems

[Lindsay Haisley <fmouse-gentoo@fmp.com>]

On Sun, 2011-03-20 at 08:24 +0000, Jean-Marc Beaune wrote:
> This is due to ATA/ATAPI (DEPRECATED) being disabled in newer kernels,
> replaced by Serial ATA and Parallel ATA drivers. 
> 
> Make sure you enabled this support properly. 
> 
> In my case that happened to me as well, on a remote computer, which
> was my mother's box... 
> 
> Anyway, in fstab /dev/sdXX shoud work, at least I made this change on
> a couple of machines and that went fine. 

Jean-Marc, thanks.  This gives me a bit of insight.

I've been compiling kernels for this box for some time, carrying over
the .config file between kernel versions and updating them.  Last night
I built IDE functionality as a module (it was previously compiled into
the kernel, as per my carried-over .config files) thinking that I would
simply not load it at run-time.  As I noted in my post, while the the
kernel recognized "root=/dev/sda4" as a kernel param, the boot process
crashed with a note that "/dev/sda4" wasn't recognized.  It's entirely
possible that this module got auto-loaded, or that there's some other
anomaly in my kernel config that's throwing things off.

My next step is to completely rebuild the kernel, using the config built
into the distributed kernel source, making only the necessary mods for
the box's hardware needs.  I'll find a time window during the next few
days to work on this.

-- 
Lindsay Haisley       |"Windows .....
FMP Computer Services |    life's too short!"
512-259-1190          |
http://www.fmp.com    |              - Brad Johnston