[BBLISA] Why do Linux rescue CDs make SATA disks look like SCSI ?

[Brian McAllister]

>>> On 1/14/2009 at 22:54:17 EST, Dewey Sasser wrote:

  > For all three of the latter distros, smarttools work nicely with the
  > "-d ata" flag added.  This works from both command line (smartctl) and
  > for smartd.

Indeed that does work, and I should have thought of it.  I've read those
man pages enough times...

>>> On 1/15/2009 at 09:56:23 EST, David Allan wrote:

  > The change causing non-SCSI disks to appear as sdX rather than hdX is not 
  > distro specific, it's a base kernel change.  With very new kernels, both 
  > IDE and SATA appear as SCSI disks.  There is some information available 
  > online as to why this change was made.

Clearly one can choose to use the old driver in a new kernel.  Is it
possible to build a kernel that has both drivers available as modules and
select which one to use at boot time ?

  > In general, I would use rescue disks from the same distro as the
  > installed system.

An excellent suggestion that I should have tried long ago.  It does
necessitate having current versions of tools like smartctl and mdadm
available from other media (part of why I was using the newer CDs).

Thanks everybody.

- brian