SATA with Linux

[Dave]

Hey there,

I'm a Windows User (No jokes please lol), I want to start learning Linux so I've got my distro of Redhat 9 OR Fedora Core 1 on hand to install. I've been using Windows for a few years so you can imagine how dumb and lazy I am.

 

Soooo, I thought i'd learn some Linux and start putting it to some good use because its getting so popular. I'm just wanting to fiddle around with Linux (I've been in before) and get in abit deeper before I spent abit of money on a Linux box.

 

HOWEVER, I came to install my Linux flavour on my drive. Trouble is, I'm running an Athlon 64 3200+ from an Asus K8V Deluxe with ONE 160gb Seagate SATA drive. I'm completely stuck lol, installation cant communicate with the Via Controller my HDD is running from. I've considered buying an IDE drive to play around with it on, but I hear so much talk about how it does run on SATA drives. Just a question of getting the drivers and installing them so Linux installation can see it.

 

I just wondered if any of you had done this before & would be willing to help me keep away from the dark-side currently known as Windows? lol thanks alot...

[hijinks]

SATA is very new still and a lot of new technologies aren't supported in linux for a bit. Most all distros now ship with the series 2.4 kernel which SATA is not generally supported. On the other hand 2.6 SATA is supported. Fedora Core2 will ship with 2.6 which is due around april. I'd either wait till then and try core 2 or get a cheap ide drive and play around with it that way.

 

just my 2 cents

[Oroshi]

better wait for kernel's upgrade and keep eyes on Kernel's Official Website juts look up the changelog to see if they mention about the SATA.

 

if you know how to install the up to date kernel, you'll need to compiles such as ./configure, make and make install.

 

hope this help ya too

[anyweb]

SATA is supported out of the box with Fedora Core Release 1.

 

this is good, however, if you are combining SATA ide drives and a RAID card (eg: promise) then you may be out luck,

 

there are drivers for SATA + raid, but i havnt managed to get it to work yet

 

cheers

 

anyweb

[Dave]

Thanks for the replies, hopefully i've got an 80GB IDE heading my way, half for linux and half to back up my windows docs.

 

Worth a try anyhoo's....

 

I got a fairly new board to support the 64 bit 3200+'s, and cuz i'm only running one SATA i left it in the VIA raid instead of the promise one.

 

I'll probably get my IDE drive and do it that way. Just really wanna learn the basics of linux before i think about buying stuff to run it properly.