intrepid doesn't detect ide disk and cdrom on Sun Blade 150 (sparc)

[Przemek K.]

Ubuntu 8.10 doesn't detect ide disk and cdrom on Sun Blade 150 (sparc). Probably whole ide controller is not detected, or module is not loaded, or is not supported at all.

[Przemek K. (azrael)]

I also tried booting Debian Lenny beta2 netinst cd and it hanged after detecting the ide disk and cd drive.
Debian listed the ide controller as ALI15X3.
The ide controller works because I have Solaris 10 installed on this disk.

[Ian Weisser (ian-weisser)]

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 following additional information, if you have not already done so (pay attention to lspci's additional options), as required by the Ubuntu Kernel Team:
1. Please include the output of the command "uname -a" in your next response. It should be one, long line of text which includes the exact kernel version you're running, as well as the CPU architecture.
2. Please run the command "dmesg > dmesg.log" after a fresh boot and attach the resulting file "dmesg.log" to this bug report.
3. Please run the command "sudo lspci -vvnn > lspci-vvnn.log" and attach the resulting file "lspci-vvnn.log" to this bug report.

For your reference, the full description of procedures for kernel-related bug reports is available at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeamBugPolicies Thanks in advance!

[Przemek K. (azrael)]

I can't do it because its a livecd that doesn't detect the cdrom.

[Przemek K. (azrael)]

I mean the sparc server install CD. It doesn't detect the cdrom so I can't install the system.

[Przemek K. (azrael)]

Maybe this has something to do with the fact that module ide_cd is not in the initramfs?

[juha lainio (juha-lainio)]

Same problem with Sun Blade 1500. IDE Controller is detected ( Ali M5229 - 10b9:5229) but no Kernel Driver or module is loaded. Only available module is ATA_Generic.

[Przemek K. (azrael)]

I've managed to install Debian on my Blade 150, but it was a lot of hassle.
I used a netinst cd, and passed a "ide=nodma" to kernel options. The installation hanged at the end, and I had to install silo manually. I couldn't install silo to the whole disk MBR so I installed it to the partitions BR. To run silo I have to run "boot disk:d" from OBP. I had to put "ide=nodma" to the kernel options in silo.conf to be able to boot Debian.

[Tobias Axelsson Heia (merald)]

Have the same problem on Sun Sparc V240 server. Tried the ide=nodma, tried to modprobe all modules available for IDE controllers and cdroms, but can not find it.

A solution would be to be able to download a netinstall mini.iso for Sparc with ubuntu 8.10, that unfortunately is not available. A supported 7.10 is available and worked great to install from, somehow I cant upgrade this to 8.04 and then 8.10 that was my plan. With just installed the core packages the do-release-update complain about a english languagepackage is broken, but its not according the utils. The unsupported mini.iso 8.04 just hangs after loading kernel.

[Tobias Axelsson Heia (merald)]

One more thing, tried to install debian 4.r7 and that worked as a charm. But I want to run Ubuntu distribution if possible.

[technious (jim-baker)]

Confirmed for Sun Blade 100 too.

[kernel-janitor (kernel-janitor)]

Hi Przemysław,

Please be sure to confirm this issue exists with the latest development release of Ubuntu. ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/karmic . If the issue remains, please run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux 296263

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

[This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Thomas Ribbrock (emgaron+ubuntu)]

The comments of "kernel-janitor" in #11 are not valid. There is no Karmic beta iso for Sparc, so this test cannot be done. Further, there don't seem to be any Mainline Build kernels for Sparc, so this test cannot be done. In addition, it is not possible to test a Mainline Build kernel if the system cannot be installed (which is the problem at hand here) - one would need to modify the installation CD to do so, which is not straight forward.

[Thomas Ribbrock (emgaron+ubuntu)]

I can confirm this problem for U10 and 8.10 (Intrepid) and 9.04 (Jaunty). I can boot from the "alternate" or "server" CD (as supported by OpenBoot), but during the installation, the installer stops as it cannot detect the CDROM drive. According to the dmesg output, *no* IDE is detected - no controller and subsequently no devices. The SCSI card that is present in this machine is detected, though. From the installer shell, I cannot mount anything, hence, so far I have been unable to retrieve a dmesg while in the installer. "lspci" lists the IDE controller as "Silicon Image, Inc. PCI0646 (rev 03)".

To verify, I tried to install 8.04 (Hardy) on the same machine - in this case, the IDE controller is properly detected (however, the install fails due to other problems). I have attached the dmesg as retrieved under 8.04.1.

[Thomas Ribbrock (emgaron+ubuntu)]

The output of lspci -v as seen under 8.04.1.

[Thomas Ribbrock (emgaron+ubuntu)]

The output of lsmod as seen under 8.04.1. Looks like the cmd64x module is used for the IDE controller - this module seems to be missing completely from the 8.10 and 9.04 installers.

[Thomas Ribbrock (emgaron+ubuntu)]

I just did a manual upgrade from 8.04.1(*) to 8.10 on my U10. The resulting 8.10 system boots fine and *does* find the IDE controller and the CDROM:

(from dmesg)
[...]
[ 7.099058] CMD646: IDE controller (0x1095:0x0646 rev 0x03) at PCI slot 0000
:01:03.0
[ 7.099090] CMD646: MultiWord DMA force limited
[ 7.099106] CMD646: 100% native mode on irq 14
[ 7.099133] ide0: BM-DMA at 0x1fe02c00020-0x1fe02c00027, BIOS settings: h
da:PIO, hdb:PIO
[ 7.099214] ide1: BM-DMA at 0x1fe02c00028-0x1fe02c0002f, BIOS settings: h
dc:PIO, hdd:PIO
[ 7.099311] Probing IDE interface ide0...
[ 7.664511] Probing IDE interface ide1...
[ 8.064828] hdc: CRD-8322B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
[ 8.736622] hdc: host max PIO5 wanted PIO255(auto-tune) selected PIO4
[ 8.736730] hdc: MWDMA2 mode selected
[ 8.738801] ide1 at 0x1fe02c00010-0x1fe02c00017,0x1fe02c0001a on irq 14
[ 8.808523] libata version 3.00 loaded.
[ 8.901289] hdc: ATAPI 32X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache
[ 8.901316] Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.20
[...]

Like in 8.04.1, lsmod shows the cmd64x module:
[...]
cmd64x 6912 0 [permanent]
sym53c8xx 85096 3
scsi_transport_spi 27840 1 sym53c8xx
ide_core 142200 2 ide_cd_mod,cmd64x
[...]

In my eyes, this proves that it is not the kernel as such that is the problem, but missing modules on the Installation CD-image. The cmd64x module is located in /lib/modules/2.6.25-2-sparc64/kernel/drivers/ide/pci. From what I could see on the installation medium, this whole subdirectory is missing from the installation CD system.

(*) Note for other U10 users: The 8.04.1 install was *not* straight forward on my machine - I ended up with two packages (yelp and seahorse) that would not install due to broken dependencies. I had to fix those manually.

[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

This bug report was marked as Incomplete and has not had any updated comments for quite some time. As a result this bug is being closed. Please reopen if this is still an issue in the current Ubuntu release http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download . Also, please be sure to provide any requested information that may have been missing. To reopen the bug, click on the current status under the Status column and change the status back to "New". Thanks.

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