Impossible to install 9.10 on PATA with HPT370/372 controller

[Maciej Słojewski]

When motherboard of my PC (i815EP chipset) boots up, the following information is displayed on the screen:

HighPoint Technologies, Inc. HPT370/372 BIOS Setting Utility v2.35 (c) 1999-2003. HighPoint Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.

The motherboard: Abit SA6R is equipped with additional IDE controller: "the onboard HPT370 RAID controller chip provides two extra IDE channels (IDE3 and IDE4) that support Ultra ATA/100 specifications". When a PATA hard disk is connected to this controller it is impossible to install Xubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) at this hard disk, as it is not visible at all. During installation procedure there is an option to manually set disks and partitions (names, sizes) where new system is to be set up. When I take this option my hard disk connected to PATA controller is not visible.

Yes, I set up BIOS of the motherboard correctly: there is menu 'Integrated Peripherals' with option 'ATA100RAID IDE Controller' set to 'Enabled'.

Unfortunately I'm not very good at providing detailed information on the subject. Nevertheless I'm willing to help and spend some time for gathering any information at need, but some support is required: where to look, what kind of information to find.

At the same motherboard there used to be installed hard disk connected to additional HPT370 controller and it used to work without problem on Kubuntu 8.04. Since I upgraded to 9.04 problems started to occur. Disk used to malfunction. Kernel started to boot and then I've got the following message:

Gave up waiting for root device. Common problems:
     - Boot args (cat /proc/cmdline)
     - Check rootdelay= (did the system wait long enough?)
     - Check root= (did the system wait for the right device?)
- Missing modules (cat /proc/modules; ls /dev)

ALERT! /dev/hd0,2 does not exist. Dropping to a shell!

With help received on Polish ubuntu forum I was able to determine that neither of above possibilities takes place. System doesn't recognize /dev/hd0,2 where my system was installed. This is exactly the same disk connected to HPT370 controller. As I couldn't determine where the problem is, I decided to reinstall the system with aid of new bootable CD, Xubuntu 9.10. Then I realized that my hard disk is not visible at all during installation procedure.

Finally I connected my PATA hard disk to 'generic' IDE controller (IDE1 of motherboard) and installed Xubuntu 9.10. Nevertheless I lost functionallity.

Before I used to have the following configuration of IDE channels and devices:

'generic' IDE controller:
IDE1 -> master: DVD burning device 1, slave: nothing
IDE2 -> master: DVD burning device 2, slave: nothing
HPT370 controller:
IDE3 -> master: hard disk with Kubuntu system, slave: noting
IDE4 -> master: nothing, slave: nothing

Now I was enforced to change the configuration:

'generic' IDE controller:
IDE1 -> master: hard disk with Xubuntu system, slave: nothing
IDE2 -> master: DVD burning device 1, slave: nothing
HPT370 controller:
IDE3 -> switched off in BIOS
IDE4 -> switched off in BIOS

In my opinion problem is related to kernel and/or a driver of HPT370 chipset. When I used a 'SYSTEM RESCUE CD x86, ver. 1.3.3' distro, my hard disk connected to HPT370 was visible, I could mount it and prepare a backup.

After installation of the Xubuntu I had the following kernel: 2.6.31-14-386. Then I updated it to the newest version: 2.6.31-16. Nothing changed.

For current distro (Xubuntu):

# lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 9.10
Release: 9.10

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Unfortunately we can't fix it without more information.

Please include the information requested at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingHardwareDetection as separate attachments.

Which cd images did you attempt to install from? Please give the full name of the image, as in karmic-desktop-i386.iso or karmic-alternate-amd64.iso.

Thanks again.

[Maciej Słojewski (mslonik)]

Full name of the image: 'xubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso'.

[Maciej Słojewski (mslonik)]

My apologies for a late answer and thank you for yours. Thanks for specifying what kind of information I should provide.

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

Thanks for reporting this bug and any supporting documentation. Since this bug has enough information provided for a developer to begin work, I'm going to mark it as confirmed and let them handle it from here. Thanks for taking the time to make Ubuntu better!

[Rod B. (rbrbrb2004)]

Just thought I would point this out... The lspci that was provided does not show a HPT370 in your configuration. It shows a Silicon Image 3112 SATA RAID controller. It does not seem that the lspci is from a Abit SA6R. Hope this helps in some way. -Rod

[Maciej Słojewski (mslonik)]

I switched off HPT370 controller in BIOS as it no longer useful and no hard disk is connected to it due to problems with installation. Hope this helps in some way.

[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

This bug was filed against a series that is no longer supported and so is being marked as Won't Fix. If this issue still exists in a supported series, please file a new bug.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.