[WBEL-users] IDE DMA during install

[Nick Bright]

Perhaps you could try going in to the BIOS of the motherboard and
disabling DMA mode for that channel via the BIOS? That might help.

As far as rebuilding the boot ISO . . . It's not too hard, i've done
it to build in custom drivers.

On 7/17/05, Sean Dogar <sean at catfeeder.net> wrote:
> Trying to install WBEL4.  The machine in question is a dual P-II 400mhz
> machine, 768 MB RAM, Intel 440BX chipset motherboard.  I've added an
> Adaptec 1205SA SATA controller, with a Western Digital 160GB SATA drive
> and a Plextor SATA DVD burner on that card.  I also have a 20x Pioneer
> CD-ROM connected to the secondary on-board IDE controller, as the
> Adaptec card doesn't appear to like bootable CD-ROM devices (but will
> apparently support booting from the hard disk).
> 
> I throw the WBEL 4 disc 1 into the CDROM that is connected to the
> parallel ATA controller on the motherboard.  The ISOLINUX boot screen
> comes up without a hitch, and when I hit return or specify a text based
> install, ISOLINUX does it's thing and speedily loads the kernel and
> initrd.  The kernel boots, and everything is cool until begins
> enumerating devices on the on-board IDE controller.  It sees the CDROM
> as hdc, which I would expect.  But it shows the I/O mode as "DMA" vice
> "pio," and I don't believe that's a correct setting for this unit.
> Right after that message comes up, the system slows down to mollases.
> In virtual console #4, I then begin to constantly get "hdc: lost
> interrupt" messages.  The system still tries to do its thing and one
> time, I actually got to the part of anaconda that asks for the type of
> keyboard and the install method.  Sometimes, I've waited almost an hour
> for it to be able to get meaningful data from the CDROM and it just
> can't do it.
> 
> I've tried to get around this by adding "ide=nodma" to the boot line.
> I've tried "linux ide=nodma" and "linux text ide=nodma"  I have also
> tried "hdc=nodma."  I've also tried moving the CDROM over to the primary
> controller.  Same story, only this time the CDROM is hda instead of hdc.
> 
> I'm pretty sure that this DMA mode mismatch is my problem.  I don't
> think the drive supports that access mode.  I thought that the default
> behavior for Redhat in the past was to leave DMA disabled by default,
> but I guess this must have changed at some point.
> 
> So I guess my questions are:
> 
> 1.  Is there a way to tell the kernel at boot that you don't want IDE
> DMA turned on?  I've tried "ide=nodma" which doesn't appear to work.
> 
> 2.  If not, how much trouble is it to mount the WBEL4 disc 1 iso, and
> replace the kernel with one I've compiled that won't have IDE DMA
> support enabled by default, and then reburn the disc?
> 
> -Sean
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