Well, after doing some research it looks like libata doesn't support sata cdroms in kernel revisions prior to 2.6.11 so I guess I'll be updating to suse 9.3 when it comes out. Abe Abram B Olson wrote:
Bit of a self update here. I've tried booting off the instalation cd a few times and looking at the messages on alt-f3. The drive is detected as scsi0 but when the scsi devices are assigned sdx names, the cdrom drive is left unassigned. Here is a map of the drive layout:
sata1 cdrw/dvdrom sata2 36Gb Hd winxp sata3 80Gb Hd storage sata4 80Gb Hd suse
I tried booting off the install cd and passing cdrom=/dev/sda and cdrom=/dev/sdd and even cdrom=/dev/scsi0 but in all cases, the installer tells me it can't find the installation media after it loads the kernel from the cdrom.
Thats what I know. It's not much. Thanks for your help.
Abe Abram B Olson wrote:
So my ide cdrom drive died this morning, it was old and had been making weird noises for a while. I replaced it with a sata cdrw/dvdrom combo drive. My system boots fine but the cdrom no longer works in suse. I looked in the yast2 cdrom section and it doesn't see any drives. I also looked in the Hardware Information section but I didn't see anything that looked like a sata cdrom.
The bios see's the drive and I can boot from it although the suse installation fails after it loads the kernel (even though it loads the sata_sil and scsi_mod modules). In winxp the cdrom works fine so I know that it is plugged in all the way and has power.
I've looked through dmesg and I see four scsi devices (formerly there were only three) so the kernel seems to be seeing the drive.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Abe