Installing the SATA driver for VIA VT8251 chipset in CentOS 4.3

This is a guide or howto document that helps you install the driver for the SATA chipset VIA VT8251 in CentOS 4.3 or RHEL4.3

The steps are:

• Install Centos 4.3 on a temporary PATA (IDE) hard disk
• Download the kernel from the Fedora Core 4 Linux distro, patch it and compile
• Boot Centos 4.3 with this new kernel in order to detect the SATA chipset

I tested using an ASUS P5V800-MX motherboard and 2 SATA 300mbit/s (SATA2 300) Samsung hard disks

You will need:

• kernel .src.rpm from FC4 updates
  kernel-2.6.17-1.2143_FC4.src.rpm
• the .spec file for the kernel
  kernel-2.6-vt8251.spec.txt
• the patch for Linux kernel 2.6.17 from Viaarena's Forum named scsi_ahci_sata or download from here linux-2.6.17-vt8251-ahci-rcx.patch.txt
• updated rpm needed
  please download udev-071-0.FC4.3.i386.rpm and mkinitrd-4.2.15-1.i386.rpm

Please follow these steps:

• 1. Install and boot Centos 4.3, use a temporary PATA (IDE) hard disk
• 2. install the kernel .src.rpm, patches and .spec file:

rpm -ivh kernel-2.6.17-1.2143_FC4.src.rpm
cp linux-2.6.17-vt8251-ahci-rcx.patch.txt /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES/linux-2.6.17-vt8251-ahci-rcx.patch
cp kernel-2.6-vt8251.spec.txt /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/kernel-2.6-vt8251.spec

• 3. compile the kernel

cd /usr/src/redhat/SPECS
rpmbuild -ba --clean --target=i686 kernel-2.6-vt8251.spec

• 4. install the updated rpms and the new kernel rpm

rpm -Fvh udev-071-0.FC4.3.i386.rpm mkinitrd-4.2.15-1.i386.rpm
rpm -Fvh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i686/kernel-2.6.17-1.2143_FC4.i686.rpm

• 5. create a new initrd that have the new sata_via module, something like this:

mkinitrd -v --preload sata_via /boot/initrd-2.6.17-1.2143_FC4.img 2.6.17-1.2143_FC4

• 6. copy all the data from the PATA temporary drive to the SATA drive

• 7. update your /etc/grub.conf in order to use the new kernel and new initrd, also install grub on the new sata drive using grub-install

• 8. update your /etc/fstab if necesary

Be sure to boot to the new kernel, use uname to find the current version:

uname -a

Run depmod once after booting the new kernel:

depmod -a

Load the drivers with modprobe:

modprobe sata_via

Check if the drivers were loaded:

lsmod | grep sata_via
tail -n 25 /var/log/messages

• If the command lspci is not working, try adding this boot parameter to the kernel:
  acpi=off

• some users reported using pci=conf1 also solved the problem:
  http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/6/7/176

Many thanks to:

• bjacques @ viaarena forums for the patches, status topic and help
• leonbaker @ viaarena forums for the first detailled instructions for centos 4, the .src.rpm, the instructions and help
• Rajahuroman @ viaarena forums for detailed info about the the patches and FC5

Here some links about VT8251

• ViaArena Linux Forums
• leonbaker centos instructions
• bjacques VT8251 status page
• rajahuroman's vt8251 solutions page
• My bugzilla entry

You can get my email here tinymailto.com/oliver