From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7a) Gecko/20040218 Description of problem: I'm trying to install on a Sony Vaio SR17. This machine uses an external pcmcia cdrom drive. It was well supported by Redhat 7.x and 8.0 installers (and debian and xandros), but the fedora test2 installer can't find the cdrom, and prompts me with a list of drivers. None of these drivers seem to involve pcmcia/cardbus, except for one pcmcia scsi driver (Qlogic). More specific info about the hardware on request, but I'm guessing this is a case of pcmcia not being there. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Insert CD into drive. 2. Plug drive into pcmcia slot. 3. Power machine on, hit return on all the defaults making sure to choose a cdrom install. Actual Results: "Unable to find any devices of the type needed for this installation type. Would you like to manually select your driver or use a driver disk?" Expected Results: CD found, makes clunking and whirring noises, install proceeds. Additional info: ctl-alt-f5 showed me a screen that reported, among other things, <6> Yenta: CardBus bridge found at 0000:00:0c.0 [104d:8094] <6> Yenta: ISA IRQ mask 0x0cb8, PCI irq 9 But I don't see anything mentioning the cdrom. So maybe pcmcia/yenta is loaded, and it's some other module, like ide-cs, that's missing? With some older distro installers (including redhat 9) this particular machine and cdrom required the boot time parameter: ide2=0x180,0x386 So I tried that (also ide1=, which worked on a lot of other distro's installers in the past) but that hung the fedora installer: after loading the usb and firewire drivers, it accesses the cdrom, I hear a couple of noises from the drive, and the screen freezes, all blue except for the single line legend at the bottom (about <Tab> and so forth).
It sounds like the ide2= is needed, but then the kernel hangs. Are your keyboard leds flashing at that point?
No LEDs flashing. The ide2= parameter doesn't seem to be needed for booting into linux in kernels after 2.4.25, or current 2.6 kernels (after 2.6.3, I think, not sure about earlier). What kernel does FC2test2 use? When the install hangs, ctl-alt-F3 works, and gets me to a screen where the last message is (not surprisingly): * trying to mount CD device hde ctl-alt-F4 ends with: <3>hde: drive not ready for command <4>hde: ATAPI reset timed-out, status=0xff <4>ide2: reset timed-out, status=0xff <4>end_request: I/O error, dev hde, sector 64 <4>isofs_fill_super: bread failed, dev=hde, iso_blknum=16, block=16 (prior to that are lots of repetitions of similar errors).
You need pci=off ide=0x180,0x386 (And not test3 where pci=off is broken [sorry]). The Sony maps the PCMCIA CD-ROM as a legacy IDE device so you can update even old OS's and install via their CD-ROM. This is neat but when Fedora loads the cardbus driver the CD-ROM vanishes as the cardbus is configured and there isn't yet a hotplug capable cardbus ide driver in Linux.
Update based on the FC3 release, tested on an SR33 (similar to the SR17 in its PCMCIA CD handling): It looks like pci=off is still broken even in the released FC3. It generates a kernel panic, either with the line Alan gives above, or with the different line (ide1=, not ide=) given in the FC3 release notes. Booting with ide2=0x180,0x386 does see the CD. (Though the FC3 install does not complete; "The installer exited abnormally" after the first CD, and rebooting seems to show a correctly installed cmdline fedora with none of the X or other software that should have been installed.) Didn't try ide1=, but it has also worked in the past. Booting with ide=0x180,0x386 (no pci=) fails; it doesn't kernel panic, just says "No CD found". So ide1= or ide2= is apparently needed, not just ide=.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 112455 ***