Fedora Core 2, Adaptec ASH-1233 pci ide controller ultra ata card

[Mitch Wiedemann]

James Wilkinson wrote:

>Mitch Wiedemann posted a long how-to on adding a PCI ATA adapter card.
>
>Thank you very much. I've got a few observations, though:
>  
>
>>SITUATION:
>>I have in my computer two hard disk drives (/dev/hda & /dev/hdb), and 
>>two CD drives (/dev/scd0 (CDRW) and /dev/hdd (DVD)) connected to the 
>>motherboard IDE controller.
>>    
>>
>
>That's not necessarily optimal: but you know that. I assume you've got
>them spread out better now?
>
>  
>
No, actually I didn't know that...  You mean for speed of data 
transfers?  Put my HDDs on different cables?  Whaddaya mean?

>Any reason why you're still using ide-scsi for the CDRW?
>  
>
Um. Ignorance?  That's how FC2 set it up.  and it works, so I haven't 
changed it.  How should it be done differently?  What are the advantages 
of doing it differently?

>  
>
>>PROBLEM:
>>When I installed the card and connected some extra hard disk drives to 
>>its cables, the Fedora Core 2 Linux kernel loaded the drivers for the 
>>ide controllers in the wrong order.  It loaded the Adaptec ASH-1233 
>>driver first, thereby making the spare drives attached to it /dev/hda 
>>and /dev/hdc (they were both set as single, master devices on their 
>>respective cables).  My motherboard ide controller driver was loaded 
>>next, causing my existing Linux drives to become /dev/hde and /dev/hdf 
>>and my CD drives /dev/hdg and /dev/hdh!  The system would boot, but the 
>>swap and my home partition were unavailable.
>>    
>>
>
>I'm guessing that you refer to your home partition in /etc/fstab by
>device, not label. You've just found one reason why Red Hat and Fedora
>prefer using labels...
>
>James.
>
>  
>
Yes, I thought of reconfiguring everything so that the system would work 
with the Linux partitions as /dev/hde and /dev/hdf, but I'm the sort of 
guy who likes to stay up late figuring out how to make a computer do 
what I want it to do, not the other way 'round.  I like my primary OS 
partition to be on /dev/hda.  I don't even have a really good reason 
why, other than I know to be REALLY careful when fiddling with /dev/hda. 
I'm fairly stubborn that way.  Does my stubborness make sense?  Not 
always.  And it often causes me to lose sleep, but whaddaya gonna do? :)

-- 
Mitch Wiedemann
mc^2 Computer Consulting
mc2 at lightlink.com
http://www.lightlink.com/mc2