Hi, After playing around for a while, I decided to go ahead and do my AMD64 Etch install for real. At the end of it, though, I got a surprise -- no DMA on any IDE devices. The drives are capable, the BIOS recognizes them as UDMA5, I tried a bunch of different 80-connector cables, and hdparm shows them as udma5 too. But still, attempts to turn on DMA got the well-known "DIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted" error.
While googling like crazy for ideas, I came upon this thread from this mailing list: http://lists.debian.org/debian-amd64/2005/08/msg00309.html which suggests the problem may be loading ide-generic before my chipset-specific module, and that the solution would be to rebuild my initrd. Since my symptoms look similar to those described in this thread, I'll give it a shot. I've never built or rebuilt an initrd, or monkeyed with the contents of one. When I haven't been able to use a Debian install kernel, I've always just built my own and compiled the drive controller/ filesystem modules into the kernel, so there's no issue. I could do that again here, and I plan to eventually; but I'd like to have the installation kernel working well first so I can use it as a base from which to start (these are my first steps with 2.6.x as well). So I'm wondering if someone can point me at good docs/a howto for building/rebuilding the Debian install initrd? I have a vague memory of people commenting that mkinitrd is now deprecated in favor of yaird -- that correct? Thanks for any info. -c P.S. What's odd about this is that at one point in my playing around, I *did* have DMA access. I added some drives and did my install, and presto, no DMA anymore. So if it is the "ide-generic loaded before chipset-specific" issue, the loading sequence apparently can vary. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]