Hi

i have been fiddling with the ac patches since kernel 2.6.10 (thats EVERY version since then)
i just compiled and installed 2.6.11.3 with patch-2.6.11-ac3 and the issue has not changed. (i actually don't know if its an issue actually - just a little strange).

i am running in pass through mode - not raid.
the problem is that drives attached to the it8212 controller are being picked up first - that is, they are set to /dev/hda and /dev/hdb. my actual primary IDE drive ends up being /dev/hde and the primary slave is /dev/hdf (i guess c and d are the second it8212 ide ports, these have no drives attached). i also have a cd drive and dvd drive on the seconday ide which are set as hdg and hdh respectively.

i did not compile the it821x driver into the kernel but as a module (i have tried that also - no change). though i'm not actually loading the module from /etc/modules, its loaded anyway (along with a myriad of other ata controllers which then report errors as they can't be unloaded - though i read somewhere that this was by design??? strange).

i have dug around for some boot options for the driver but can't seem to find any. went through the source code for the module also and couldn't figure anything out from that. are there any???

bios settings are correct as far as i can tell - simply set to ata mode not raid.

grub can't see the it8212 controller so i have to set the root drive to hd0 and then provide the kernel option root=/dev/hde2 to boot. i did try to remap the drives in grub, but it wouldn't work as it of course didn't pick them up. they're the FIRST thing that comes up as the kernel loads however - almost as if assuming that i want to boot from a drive attached to the controller so it goes there first.

is there some kernel boot option to have the controller not load so quickly thereby not getting assigned drives hda-hdd??? is there something else i'm missing?? is it by design???

please let me know if some extra info is required.
other than that posted above, the ac patch for it821x seems to be working fine.

i have posted relevant output details below.

any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. (at the moment i'm downloading every kernel src version and ac patch as they come out in the hope that its been sorted out - very time consuming as you can imagine)

thanks

Takis

output from fdisk -l is below (hda and hdb are on the it8212 controller):

Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 155061 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1               1      155061    78150712+  83  Linux

Disk /dev/hdb: 20.4 GB, 20490559488 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2491 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdb1               1        2491    20008926   83  Linux

Disk /dev/hde: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hde1               1         146     1172713+  82  Linux swap
/dev/hde2   *         147       14593   116045527+  83  Linux

Disk /dev/hdf: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdf1               1        9729    78148161   83  Linux

relevant dmesg output follows:

Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00alpha2
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
IT8212: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:03:0c.0
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:03:0c.0[A] -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 169
IT8212: chipset revision 17
it821x: controller in pass through mode.
IT8212: 100% native mode on irq 169
    ide0: BM-DMA at 0x9000-0x9007, BIOS settings: hda:pio, hdb:DMA
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0x9008-0x900f, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:pio
Probing IDE interface ide0...
hda: WDC WD800JB-00FMA0, ATA DISK drive
hdb: Maxtor 2B020H1, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x8010-0x8017,0x8402 on irq 169
Probing IDE interface ide1...
NET: Registered protocol family 1
ICH5: IDE controller at PCI slot 0000:00:1f.1
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:1f.1[A] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 177
ICH5: chipset revision 2
ICH5: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
    ide2: BM-DMA at 0xf000-0xf007, BIOS settings: hde:DMA, hdf:DMA
    ide3: BM-DMA at 0xf008-0xf00f, BIOS settings: hdg:DMA, hdh:DMA
Probing IDE interface ide2...
hde: WDC WD1200JB-00CRA1, ATA DISK drive
hdf: WDC WD800JB-00ETA0, ATA DISK drive
ide2 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
Probing IDE interface ide3...
hdg: SONY DVD-ROM DDU1613, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdh: SONY CD-RW CRX230E, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide3 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
Probing IDE interface ide1...
hda: max request size: 128KiB
hda: 156301488 sectors (80026 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63, UDMA(100)
hda: cache flushes supported
 /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: p1
hdb: max request size: 128KiB
hdb: 40020624 sectors (20490 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=39703/16/63, UDMA(100)
hdb: cache flushes not supported
 /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0: p1
hde: max request size: 128KiB
hde: 234441648 sectors (120034 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=65535/16/63, UDMA(100)
hde: cache flushes not supported
 /dev/ide/host2/bus0/target0/lun0: p1 p2
hdf: max request size: 1024KiB
hdf: 156301488 sectors (80026 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=16383/255/63, UDMA(100)
hdf: cache flushes supported