On Sun, 2007-10-28 at 20:13 -0700, Vlad Codrea wrote: > Hi, > > Have you tried compiling only libata in the kernel? Libata, being > newer, might work on your laptop even if the old drivers/ide does not. One of the kernels has that compiled in, along with drivers. It's a one-size-fits-all kernel, tested on many machines. I really doubt if libata alone would do much for me, as the disk and bios doesn't really want to know about ata at all. We're 1998 here, remember. ATA has to be disabled for this to read the disk at all. I did chase for an old 2.4.18 kernel from my last laptop, and that halts at the same place with a complaint about devices, (Can't open an initial console) so I'm tarring the 2.4 /dev directory (7.5MB) bzipping it (86k!!) and sending it over and I'll try that next. I'll probably go down in flames later in the boot, but we'll see... Nearly identical IDE messages - all the lines about PIIX4 as before, then hda: 6332256 sectors (3242MB) w/128Kib Cache, CHS=6282/16/63, DMA Partition check: hda: [PIBL] [785/128/63] hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4 (That's right - there's more of them now.) Well, I got rid of the 'initial console' error. I still get to EXT3-fs mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly Freeing unused kernel memory: 220k freed __WE HALT HERE__ No initial console error (it evidently was opened) and then ??? http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-9-Manual/ref-guide/s1-boot-init-shutdown-process.html end of section 1.2.3 Evidently some failure to launch init. -- Declan Moriarty <declan.moriarty@xxxxxx> - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ide" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
