Hi Niki,
On Sun, 29 May 2005 11:48:04 +0200, Niki Kovacs <mickey@mouse.com> wrote:

>I just installed 2.6.11.10a following Grant Coady's mini-HOWTO on this list.
>Everything went OK, except I get the following error message at boot time:
>
>*****************
>Warning: the dma on your hard drive is turned off. This may really slow down
>the fsck process
>*****************
>
>What am I supposed to do now?

Don't take somebody else's custom .config and use it without tuning
it to your hardware. I made no claims for 'universal' config, each
one is tuned to particular hardware I have, okay? Onwards...

Run lspci and look for IDE or SATA line, three examples:

Intel chipset:
00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01)

Another Intel:
00:07.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82371FB PIIX IDE [Triton I] (rev 02)

Via chipset:
00:0f.0 RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)
00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)

Then visit the menuconfig: Device Drivers - ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support
page and select what matches _your_ hardware:

example from via chipset box:

Intel:
< > Intel PIIXn chipsets support
.. . .
Via:
<*> VIA82CXXX chipset support

If you have SATA drives, also visit Device Drivers
- SCSI device support - SCSI low-level drivers

And turn on SATA driver, in my case:

Via:
[*] Serial ATA (SATA) support
.. . .
<*> VIA SATA support

Always turn on SCSI disk support, it is required for some (all?)
USB-storage devices.

And, when you 'playing' with these new .configs, also visit:

General setup - Local version - append to kernel release

and add numbers, letters something smaller than ~ 6 chars (no blanks).

Save that, do a make ... add to bootloader and try again, always
make sure you can reboot to distro kernel when 'play' kernel fails.

Keep trying until you 'get' it. I've been where you're at now,
it does get easier over time. Once it 'clicks' and you see linux
running as intended and it is _much_ better performer than the
general distro kernel. Distro kernel sacrifices performance so it
gets GNU/Linux onto your hardware, custom kernel gains performance
at cost of _only_ running properly on targeted hardware.


DMA is turned off 'cos system fell back to PIO mode 'cos it been
told to use wrong driver for _your_ HDD controller. Linux very
forgiving. Unlike the msft 'end-luser experience'... )

--Grant.