Installing SuSE 10 on a XPC ST20G5 Shuttle PC

[gilthanaz]

[Problem]

When trying to install SuSE 10 on a XPC ST20G5 Shuttle MicroATX PC with a SATA HDD, the installer does not recognize the SATA HDD even tho the module sata_uli is loaded and scans the SATA controller for devices. The Chipset is a ULi M1573.


[Solution]
While the installer is barking up the wrong tree for not finding any harddisks, use ctrl+alt+F2 to get to a working shell (Or F1-F5, there should be a shell somewhere). Use modprobe in that shell to insmod the sata driver again. dmesg then should show something like the following:

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>rmmod sata_uli
>modprobe sata_uli
>dmesg

Dmesg output:

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libata version 1.12 loaded.
ACPI-0212: *** Warning: Device is not power manageable
ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xFD00 ctl 0xFC02 bmdma 0xF900 irq 11
ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xFB00 ctl 0xFA02 bmdma 0xF908 irq 11
ata3: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xFD08 ctl 0xFC06 bmdma 0xF910 irq 11
ata4: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0xFB08 ctl 0xFA06 bmdma 0xF918 irq 11
ata1: no device found (phy stat 00000000)
scsi0 : sata_uli
ata2: no device found (phy stat 00000000)
scsi1 : sata_uli
ata3: no device found (phy stat 00000000)
scsi2 : sata_uli
ata4: no device found (phy stat 00000000)
scsi3 : sata_uli

In this case, it did not work on the first time (sata_uli.ko is a bit buggy), so just use the modprobe command again. For some reason, when the module is tried to be loaded two times in a short time-period, it will find the HDD.
So, after another:

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>modprobe sata_uli
>dmesg

You should actually see the HDD in your dmesg output!

[Comments]
Even tho you now can access, mount and partition the HDD, the SuSE installer continues to be a total bitch. I'll post another topic with the problems i ran into and the solutions when iam done here.