[WBEL-users] WhiteBox and SATA

[Benjamin J. Weiss]

On Fri, 19 Nov 2004, Vic wrote:

> Hi All.
> 
> Sorry if I'm hashing over old ground here - I've not finished reading
> through the archies yet (any chance of a search option there?).
> 
> I'm specifying a server at the moment, and I'd like to run WB on it (I've
> had a WB machine for a number of months now, and it's rather good, isn't
> it?). But I've run out of IDE ports, and I'm toying with the idea of using
> the SATA ports on the MoBo.
> 
> At this point, I get rather nervous - I've not yet owned a SATA drive,
> I've only ever seen one, and that had *loads* of problems[1]. Now from
> what I've read, the chipset I'm planning on using (SiS 964) is supported
> by libata, so I might be in luck...
> 
> So - anyone tried anything like this? Any advice, other than RTFM/RTFA/STFW?

>From what I've heard, if you're going to use PATA and SATA together, as 
long as you're booting off of the PATA drive(s), you should be fine.  
(That's what I'm doing at home right now.)

On the other hand, if you want to run a pure SATA system, you're going to 
have a problem with WB.  I've heard that the latest updates to the RH 
kernel will allow you to initially load to a pure SATA system and run.  
Since WB hasn't done a respin with the newest kernel, you'd have to jump 
through some hoops (including creating a custom boot floppy) in order to 
load the system.  

You might check out CentOS.  I believe that their latest version (3.3) has 
a kernel that's new enough that it should work right out of the box for a 
pure SATA system.  

Ben