Fedora Users — FC2 booting with Gigabyte 8IPE1000 PRO2 SATA

I can get FC2 (kernel 2.6.5-1.358smp) to boot by mounting the initrd; editing linuxrc to load the mod_scsi, libata, sd_mod & ata_piix modules on boot; and then unmounting and replacing the original initrd. This is OK in that it works however from about kernel 2.4.24 it was unnecessary; the sata drive showed as "hde" and perfomance was many times better.

I remember that 2.4.24 didn't seem to have a scsi/sata type section in it! I didn't think it would work, first time I did it but it did.

It is the ich5 architecture but for some reason it doesn't seem to be as straight forward as it seems it should be.

My ultimate wish is to be able to forget about compiling my own kernels or stuffing about with initrd.

I would be so appreciative to hear more about my problem from someone that knows about what is causing it. For example, until the next kernel is released, is there a reasonably easy way have my system booting from hde again? What was the iscsi thing about in the last rh9 distrib I had? Would that help me?


Cheers
Marc