Harddrives renaming themselves?

[Gaer Boy]

If this issue is only occurring with MX, then it is not a hardware issue. A flaw in the BIOS firmware at worst, maybe. Is AHCI enabled in the BIOS?

I agree about a possible flaw in the BIOS firmware, combined with BitJam's suggestion below. I have the identical motherboard and have had problems with drive recognition in Mepis 12 & MX-14. I had no problems with Mepis 11.

I think the new kernel in MX is being very aggressive about scanning for block devices as fast as possible. It seems possible to me that this is triggering a problem with a misconfiguration of the jumpers that had not been seen before. The differences in the kernel configurations seem to be very minor and not at all related to this issue. Other people have had problems with the new kernel that I believe are related to ER's problem. For example the device naming order in /dev/ is now less consistent and usb devices can appear before non-usb devices. I believe this too is due to more aggressive scanning in the latest kernel. Specifically, I think the kernel is no longer waiting for devices in order to dole out names in a specific order. If you want to name all the internal devices before you name the usb devices then you have to wait until you have seen all the internal devices before you start handing out names for the usb devices.

Expressed more technically, this is what I was trying to say in my simple way. I've not had the problem of device allocation varying, but I don't use the PATA port. I've had a persistent problem with hanging boots, always at about the point where /dev is populated.

I appreciate the info but I have been casually following the thread for awhile. I asked about AHCI because if it is disabled then the SATA controllers will operate in "IDE emulation" mode which might play a roll in drive detection / ordering. However, I now note from her lsmod that she is running in AHCI mode. I am doubtful that this is a master/slave jumper issue here as she almost certainly would have encountered problems before now.

I don't think you're right on this. I can't interpret the lsmod information, but I asked Eadwine about her SATA BIOS settings, and she said "All IDE". For the 6 SATA ports on this motherboard there are 3 possibilities - all AHCI, all IDE, 1-4 SATA + 5-6 IDE. The default is all IDE and I have option 3 (needed to let the system recognise a SATA optical drive when installing OS).

One other point. Eadwine posted a photo of her screen during the BIOS stage which showed:

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Auto Detecting Pri Master ATAPI CD-ROM
Auto Detecting Pri Slave ATAPI CD ROM
Auto Detecting SATA1 IDE Hard Disk
Pri Master Plextor
Pri Slave Sony

So it looks like the BIOS is detecting the PATA optical drives before the SATA hard disk. I can't get a shot of my screen - it's gone too quickly - but the only Auto Detect is the SATA optical drive.

[Eadwine Rose]

If you have a film function on the camera, you can use that and then grab the screen you need

[Gaer Boy]

If you have a film function on the camera, you can use that and then grab the screen you need :smile:

I can try - watch this space!

[kmathern]

...So it looks like the BIOS is detecting the PATA optical drives before the SATA hard disk. I can't get a shot of my screen - it's gone too quickly - but the only Auto Detect is the SATA optical drive.

Have you tried pressing the Scroll Lock or Pause/Break key ?

[Gaer Boy]

I'll try that as well, but there's only about 1/10 second between the message appearing and the screen blanking. I'm too old for game response times!

[Gaer Boy]

That was fun - I couldn't catch the screen by pausing to boot, but I did manage to film it. The view I needed was on 2 frames.

boot2.png

I've never been able to see the final two lines - and that is "00 USB..."

[Eadwine Rose]

TWO only?? Geez... no I got the chance to actually take a picture (the 2nd one happened to be a lucky hit ).

[qtech]

Definitely running AHCI here:

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Feb 17 18:27:53 eadwinemx14beta2 kernel: [    0.360692] pci 0000:00:11.0: set SATA to AHCI mode

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Feb 17 18:27:53 eadwinemx14beta2 kernel: [    2.548969] ata3: SATA link up 3.0 Gbps (SStatus 123 SControl 300)

[Eadwine Rose]

Just rechecked, IDE on both *shrug*


Meanwhile changed the jumpers to CS, and changed the boot order back to Plextor first.

[BitJam]

Like Tux, we await the news with baited breath.