Enable DMA on SATA drive?

[merc]

I just installed Hoary64 on my AMD64 machine. Here are the specs:

AMD Athlon64 3000+
K8T800 Motherboard with 8237 southbridge (native SATA)

My drives are setup as follows:

IDE Channel 0: DVD
IDE Channel 1: 10gb Seagate PATA drive
SATA Channel 0: 80gb Seagate SATA drive

The problem is that I can't enable DMA on the SATA drive. It mounts under /dev/sda, and here's where the weirdness begins:


merc@blackbox:~$ sudo hdparm -i /dev/sda

/dev/sda:

Model=ST380013AS 3.18, FwRev=3.18, SerialNo=
Config={ }
RawCHS=9729/255/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=0
BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=0kB, MaxMultSect=0
(maybe): CurCHS=9729/255/63, CurSects=0, LBA=no
IORDY=no
PIO modes: pio0
AdvancedPM=no

* signifies the current active mode


And by contrast, this is what I get for the IDE drive:
/dev/hda:

Model=ST310014A, FwRev=3.09, SerialNo=5JREKJA7
Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }
RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=off
CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=20005650
IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5
AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled
Drive conforms to: device does not report version:

* signifies the current active mode


When I try to enable DMA on the SATA drive, this happens:


merc@blackbox:~$ sudo hdparm -d1 /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
setting using_dma to 1 (on)
HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device


Here's an "lsmod | grep via":

merc@blackbox:~$ lsmod | grep via
via_rhine 22788 0
mii 5504 1 via_rhine
i2c_viapro 8716 0
i2c_core 23960 1 i2c_viapro
sata_via 9476 0
libata 52488 1 sata_via
via82cxxx 14128 1
ide_core 143748 4 ide_cd,ide_generic,via82cxxx,ide_disk



I have tried removing the via82cxxx modules (I read somewhere that it conflicts with the sata_via module), but even if i deleted the module (the .ko file), it would still showup in the lsmod output.

The weird thing is that I think the SATA drive worked fine with DMA before I added the PATA drive to the computer.

:-(

Any help would be greatly appretiated.

[merc]

ANyone?

[devil28]

cant really help you other then that I got the same board with 2 pata and one sata and dma worked from the start for me

[FluffyElmo]

I have the same hardware and the exactly same problem. From looking at posts, it appears that hdparm doesn't work with SATA drives but there isn't an alternative tool yet?

Devil28, could you post your /etc/modules file? I've tried various combinations but mostly succeeded only in disabling DMA altogether :???:

Any help appreciated...

[floogy]

From looking at posts, it appears that hdparm doesn't work with SATA drives but there isn't an alternative tool yet? [...] Any help appreciated...

Hello,

I postet Yesterday some lines about that. Ubuntu Forums - Other Application Support: Default hdparm and s-ata (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=29635)
There is a Tool blktool from the gkernel projekt. It's written by the author of libata [LKML]From: Jeff Garzik - Subject: new tool: blktool (http://lkml.org/lkml/2004/8/15/157) .



Maybe you can find some useful Information about SATA and DMA in Jeff Garzik's posts (http://www.kerneltraffic.org/kernel-traffic/quotes/Jeff_Garzik.html) on kernelorg. For example New ADMA Driver (http://www.kerneltraffic.org/kernel-traffic/kt20041130_286.html#6) .

I hope that helps a little.

Further Info's:
Wikipedia about Serial ATA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA)
Serial ATA (SATA) chipsets — Linux support status (http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Hardware/sata.html)

A google search for dma on serialata.org gives poor results:
Google Search: dma site:serialata.org (http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=dma+site%3Aserialata.org&btnG=Google-Suche&meta=)

For example:

Future enhancements
• Serial ATA includes a transport protocol for first
party DMA transfers as well as second party DMA
transfers
– The device can set up a host adapter DMA engine to
execute DMA transfers
• With the appropriate drivers a device could:
– Execute commands out of a queue located in host
memory
– Report command results into a table/list in host memory
– Execute commands out of order to optimize
performance
– Deliver data out of order to optimize performance
– Scatter/gather data in host memory

Here You can read the details about DMA and SATA:
Serial-ATA - Native Command Queuing Final [pdf] (http://www.serialata.org/docs/Native%20Command%20Queuing%20Final.pdf)

I don't know exactly if that means, that dma could already be performed on SATA drives under windows or linux?

Kind regards

Gerhard