Problem loading module for SATA controller

[ciphrix]

I'm having a problem loading a module for my Promise SATA TX4 controller. Bascially, the drive is trying to be mounted from my fstab before the module is loaded, which it can't do. Right now I'm loading the module for the Promise card in /etc/rc.d/rc.local. I was going to put it in /etc/modules.conf but I'm not sure what I should put for the device... alias <device?> ulsata2. I don't know if that'd help or not. If I do everything manually, after booting, by entering insmod ulsata2 then mount the drive, it works fine. I just don't want to have to do that manually every time the PC boots.

Any help you guys could give me would be much appreciated.

I'm using Red Hat 9.0

[retsaw]

In some (most/all?) distros there is a file specifically to load modules, but not having used RH9 I don't know what it would be. If you can't find the file, you could try editing the system boot scripts and put it in before the mounts are done, or you could recompile your kernel with the module built in or you could set the mounts on that drive to noauto in your fstab, then mount them after you've loaded the module in rc.local.

[bwkaz]

Hotplug should detect that card automatically... Is this a driver that comes with the kernel, or did you get it somewhere else? If you got it somewhere else, do you have the source for the ulsata2 kernel module? If you do, you can add a MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE macro so that hotplug will be able to figure out that the piece of hardware corresponds to that driver.

Then hotplug will load the module for you, and hotplug almost always runs before mounting filesystems.

(This is all assuming you have a 2.6 kernel running. If that's wrong, then forget most of it, because 2.4 won't support PCI hotplugging AFAIK.)

[ciphrix]

Originally posted by retsaw
In some (most/all?) distros there is a file specifically to load modules, but not having used RH9 I don't know what it would be.
That would be /etc/modules.conf but as I said, I'm unsure of the complete syntax.

To bwkaz; I'm using 2.4 unfortunately because that's the only kernel Promise had the source for.

[bwkaz]

Does the kernel Promise RAID driver support your card? I'd think it would, and if it does, it'd be a heck of a lot better to use the in-kernel driver than some random external one. Even if it is from the hardware manufacturer. :)

[timothykaine]

Im just gonna state the obvious that you should probably upgrade to a distro that still exists. :p

[ciphrix]

Originally posted by bwkaz
Does the kernel Promise RAID driver support your card? I'd think it would, and if it does, it'd be a heck of a lot better to use the in-kernel driver than some random external one. Even if it is from the hardware manufacturer. :)

I'm not sure. What's the name of the driver? I looked through the kernel config but I didn't see anything that was listed specifically as Promise RAID or anything similar. Sorry if that's a dumb question, I'm a n00b :)

[bwkaz]

Err... I can't find it anymore. :o I thought for sure I'd seen it before, but all I can find now are the drivers for Promise IDE add-in boards (which may support RAID, I'm not sure), and the Promise SX8 serial-ATA chip.

Dang.