I have finally installed 2.4.21-rc3. I compiled the base IDE driver into the kernel but make the ide-disk driver a module (to save RAM on machines without IDE hardware).
Following is a selection from the kernel message log. As you can see I get some nasty and worrying error messages when the kernel tries to access /dev/hda before the ide-disk module is loaded. If this is not a known bug then let me know so I can send it to linux-kernel. ReiserFS seems to be working fine in 2.4.21-rc3. Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 7.00beta3-.2.4 ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx PIIX4: IDE controller at PCI slot 00:07.1 PIIX4: chipset revision 1 PIIX4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later ide0: BM-DMA at 0x1c10-0x1c17, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:pio ide1: BM-DMA at 0x1c18-0x1c1f, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:pio hda: IC25N030ATCS04-0, ATA DISK drive blk: queue c02a8680, I/O limit 4095Mb (mask 0xffffffff) ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14 Partition check: hda:end_request: I/O error, dev 03:00 (hda), sector 0 end_request: I/O error, dev 03:00 (hda), sector 2 end_request: I/O error, dev 03:00 (hda), sector 4 end_request: I/O error, dev 03:00 (hda), sector 6 end_request: I/O error, dev 03:00 (hda), sector 0 end_request: I/O error, dev 03:00 (hda), sector 2 end_request: I/O error, dev 03:00 (hda), sector 4 end_request: I/O error, dev 03:00 (hda), sector 6 unable to read partition table [boring stuff removed] hda: attached ide-disk driver. hda: host protected area => 1 hda: 58605120 sectors (30006 MB) w/1768KiB Cache, CHS=3876/240/63, UDMA(33) /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0: p1 p2 p4 < p5 p6 p7 p8 > -- http://www.coker.com.au/selinux/ My NSA Security Enhanced Linux packages http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/ Bonnie++ hard drive benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/postal/ Postal SMTP/POP benchmark http://www.coker.com.au/~russell/ My home page