Loading driver for ata100 card at boot time

I just installed SuSE Linux 8.1, and I'm having some trouble getting the driver for my HighPoint ata100 card to load during boot-time.
The driver works ok if I run insmod or modprobe manually. I have installed the driver with these commands:
install -d /lib/modules/.../scsi
install -c hpt302.o /lib/modules/.../scsi

But this don't work. Anyone got any idea what's wrong?

...and another thing I don't uderstand is why only root gets access on FAT disks that I mount. This workes just fine with SuSe 7.x and 8.0.

Any help and ideas are appreciated.

To get commands to run on boot-up, put them in /etc/rc.local

Adding the commando [modprobe hpt302] or [insmod hpt302.o] to the startup scripts works alright, but when the system then tries to mount the disks automatically from fstab it panics and goes into safe mode.
I guess that is because the module isn't loaded into the kernel or something. Know how to hack the kernel so that it supports my Highpoint card?

Sorry, didn't see it was a disk controller card. The commands in rc.local get run after all the normal run-level stuff, so it will try and mount your disks before it's configured the card! This is probably not what we want. If you put the module name in /etc/modules then it will be loaded at boot time. Just put the module name - hpt302 - on a line by itself.


Hope this helps.

Why not compile it inside the kernel, woudn't that be easier?! No need to worry.

If your root filesystem is on that device, then you have to compile it in. Otherwise it'll have no way of getting to it when you boot.

yes, you do.
you can make a boot ramdisk and load the module from there.
(not recommended for beginners though...)

I believe the module should be able to load at any time, it's not like a RAID where you need to acces the drives to mount the root device before INIT which lives in the root.. Advanced parameters should be enabled at that point (UDMA5 I think).

IMO disk controllers drivers should be compiled in the kernel because they are going to be needed no matter what.

It's not that I've been messing with fstab that is my problem. I know what is supposed to be in there. My problem is that I had to compile the driver for my ata100 card from teh vendor's scource code. This means that I have to find out which settings I have to put where for my card to be properly integrated with my system.
In SuSE 7.x and 8.0 This was done by putting these lines in /etc/modules.conf:
- probeall block-major-8 scsi_mod sd_mod hpt302
- options -k hpt302

But now in version 8.1 I think there has been some changes, cos for every other module that is mentioned in "modules.conf" there is an alias infront of "probeall". So perhaps I have to modify more than one file now, but I have no idea which ones.

Or am I way off here?

-- And hey riv is it any difficult to compile the module into the kernel, and how do I do this? I've barely started the kernel editor, and I was frightened that I was gonna **** up my system.

Very much not recommended for beginners. In fact, I wouldn't recommend it to advanced users either unless you have a simple way of setting it up (like Debian's kernel-package) that will make the ramdisk for you, and that will apply the appropriate cramfs patch.

If you keep a second entry for your older kernel there is nothing to worry about, if the new one fails you can always boot the original one.

If it's a driver supplied by the manufacturer that's another story though. You do need to get into the "kernel editor" (you're refering to make menuconfig, right?). You press the spacebar until it shows a * rather than M (for Module of course). The magic trick at compiling a kernel is to read the help page for each and every entry and determine if it's needed (there's usually a short answer).

The part I don't understand is that it's an IDE controler but yet the install commands specifies the SCSI path?!